


Shadows Over the Moon

by Letterblade, mllelaurel



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Ashen Wolf Dimitri, Background Balthus/Hapi, Canon-Typical Violence, Casual Makeouts Among Friends, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Eventual Relationships, F/M, Found Family, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Polyamory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rating May Change, Suicidal Thoughts, Verdant Wind route
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25361749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mllelaurel/pseuds/mllelaurel
Summary: Yuri touches Hapi’s elbow, just lightly, and she blinks up at him in surprise. “You…want to save Dimitri?”“If we can.”He’s silent for a moment, studying her. “Not often you step up and start shit like this, Hapi.”The Ashen Wolves rescue Dimitri.
Relationships: Balthazar von Adalbrecht | Balthus von Albrecht/Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Hapi, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc
Comments: 59
Kudos: 109





	1. Don't Get Your Hopes Up

“So this Cornelia lady is running Faerghus now?”

Hapi freezes, one hand braced on the dank wall outside the Wilting Rose. The voices of gossiping roughs drift out the door along with the clack of tankards and the creaks of chairs.

“I guess? That prince murdered his uncle, so she stepped in and saw justice done or whatever the fuck.”

 _Cornelia._ Her blood roars in her ears and she sways on her feet.

“She’s a church lady, that’s what they do.”

“Wait, she is? Like _this_ church?”

“No, the western one.”

“What happened to the prince?”

“Heard she had him arrested and tried. But if she wants to stay queen, she’s gotta kill him, right? That’s how this shit goes.”

“Duchess. She’s calling herself a duchess.”

“What the actual fuck, Oleg?”

“I heard she’s working for the Empire. So Faerghus is like a duchy of the Empire now.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Goddess rest all their little souls—oi! Mina, sweet Mina, another round, we need something better!”

“Nothing better in _this_ place, jerks.”

“We heard you had another shipment in, so what’s the catch?”

Their voices rise. Back to the same old, same old about the junk booze. Hapi’s clamped her other hand over her mouth, just in case. Breath rattling in her throat. Though it doesn’t feel like a sigh’s coming on. She’s shaking a little. One of the cats that loiters near the Rose’s back door stares at her, hisses conversationally, and walks away.

“Fuck,” Hapi says, muffled by her own hand.

Faerghus seems to be kind of a shithole, as far as she can tell, but it doesn’t deserve _her_ for a queen. Duchess. Whichever. Nobody does. Hell, she wouldn’t even wish that on most church people she knows, and that’s saying something.

“Fuck,” she says again.

Dimitri, Didi, Big D, with his earnest blue eyes promising to protect the innocent people of Abyss—like _she’s_ innocent, that sweet big lug. And telling her so politely that she had a right to feel angry. He’d turned out to be good people, for all that he was a holy prince. Well, she’d thought that about Eddy too, and see how _that_ turned out?

Dimitri in Cornelia’s hands.

Well, hey, at least she doesn’t want to sigh. More like she wants to throw up. There’s some wretched heat burning in her belly, and she looks down at her own hand for a moment. The voices from the Rose fade into a dull roar, and she feels like her whole skin is tingling, like she’s vividly alive. Maybe _too_ alive.

She should bite back a sigh and move on with her life. Ignore this like always, one helpless kid who’s got nothing to do with it. What could she do, anyway? What’s the point?

“ _Fuck,_ ” she says, and pushes off the wall.

She needs Yuri.

* * *

She finds him holding court with a few of his rogues in a side nook in Burrow Street. Their conversation is hushed, and there’s a thunderously bitter clench to his jaw. It’s a quick enough meeting, at least. She hovers, fidgeting with her bracelets, until he dismisses them with a wave of his hand.

“You heard?” Yuri asks, sounding weary.

Hapi nods. “Didi…isn’t there something we can do?”

Yuri blinks. “You think he’s alive?”

She feels her stomach fall. “You think he’s dead?”

“A private execution. That’s the latest announcement from our new ‘duchess.’” He doesn’t even need to raise a hand to put the air quotes in. Just a disdainful twist in his voice. “She hasn’t presented a body, of course. It smells a little too convenient for my taste.”

Hapi shudders a little, mind going straight to the worst. “Maybe he…wasn’t presentable when she was done with him. Or maybe she kept him alive for fun, or some Crest shit. She likes hurting people, that’s the kind of person she is.”

She hadn’t realized how much she’d turtled into herself until Yuri touches her elbow, just lightly, and she blinks up at him in surprise. “You…want to save him?”

“If we can.”

He’s silent for a moment, studying her. “Not often you step up and start shit like this, Hapi.”

She feels her brow furrow, then blows him a raspberry. “I do plenty.” It’s not like he’s wrong. She’s—surprising herself. But… “I don’t want her to have him, I guess. Pretty simple.”

“It’s the if we can that worries me,” Yuri sighs. “That’s a big ask.”

“Don’t make this sound like I’m asking you for some big mafia spy contract or whatever it is you do. Not unless you want to get paid in shiny beetles I found yesterday.”

He laughs lightly. “At least you’re honest about that. No, if we can actually pull this off, I’ll send Dimitri the bill. Get a king on the hook. I can make use of that.” The teasing edge fades, and he leans back against the brownstone wall, eyes half-lidded and flickering from side to side like he’s calculating a lot of things very quickly. “It’s a long shot, you know. He could well be actually dead, or warped off somewhere that we’ve got no way to track.”

“She’s got a whole secret wing in the palace,” Hapi says. “Where most of the servants don’t go. And a lab in the basement. I mean, he _could_ be somewhere else, but she kept me there for years.”

“Right in the…” Yuri blinks. She hadn’t told him many details, she supposes—it’s not like it had come up. “Damn. What a creep. Do you know the layout?”

“Some of it? Dunno if anything’s changed.”

“I don’t have much of a network in Fhirdiad. If we do find him, it’d have to be a stealth strike. Dangerous as hell. You could die.”

Hapi shrugs.

Yuri’s jaw tightens. “Or get recaptured.”

She feels ice prickle down her spine. “Okay, that would suck. Look, if you don’t think you can pull it off, or if you don’t wanna—”

He holds up a hand. “No, the crazy thing is that I’m considering it, and I hate risky plays.” His mouth twists. “We can sniff around, at least. Cornelia can’t have wiped out every Blaiddyd loyalist. We might be able to drum up backup. Assuming he is alive and mobile…” He blows out a long breath. “Maybe he’ll know someplace safe to run. I’m not sure I want to bring him back to Abyss—that paints a pretty big target on our backs. Maybe there’s somewhere in Leicester he can go to ground. I’ll ask Balthus. Claude isn’t jumping on the conquest bandwagon, so they might have common ground for an alliance…”

“That is a whole lot of politics, Yuri-bird.”

“He _is_ a prince, it’s pretty relevant.” He pauses. “The roads’ll be patrolled. Getting through Faerghus isn’t easy right now.”

Hapi shrugs. “On-road, sure, but the forest is big. Do you think they’re gonna send guys wandering around out there in mud season?”

Yuri blinks. “You think you can get us through the forest?”

“Pff. Easy, city slicker. Just oil your boots.” She quirks a smile. “And get used to snuggling close. Nights’re still chilly”

“I can think of worse things. Even with that, though…Goddess, I hate long odds.”

“You said that already.”

He’s quiet for a while, going on some little face journey as he sorts through all the details. Then he takes a deep, slow breath, folding his arms. “Let me talk to some people. I need to make sure Abyss is taken care of too.”

“Sure.”

“I can’t promise I can make this happen. But…you’re not wrong. Dimitri is.” His mouth twists. “I was actually pretty excited to see what he’d do as king, and how often do you say _that?_ I don’t like the idea of him losing that chance. Just—don’t get your hopes up.”

Hapi snorts. “Hopes? Me? Who do you think I am?”

* * *

Getting into Fhirdiad isn’t as difficult as Yuri expects. Which isn’t to say it’s easy, just means there’s always a man with his mouth hanging open for a bribe. A pall hangs over the city, folks hunkering indoors lest Cornelia’s soldiers see them mourn. Sympathizing with His Royal Highness is unpopular these days. Just enough dare to venture outside that Yuri can blend with them. Scrub off the makeup, shabby up his clothes, hang his head. Heh. It’s almost like being back in Arianrhod again, West bleeding into East. 

Might have gone the other way ‘round, once, and that’s a bitter tea to swallow. Dimitri said he would help unfuck the West. No Blaiddyd had bothered in generations, but hell if Yuri hadn’t believed him then. Those blue eyes may have been earnest, but there was fire in them, too. The kind of fire you need to get things done. 

No matter. No time to dwell on it now. Dimitri first. If he lives, Yuri can revisit fixing his shitty little corner of Faerghus. If he’s dead, time to batten down for real. Focus on Abyss. Crunch down his dreams into something more manageable. 

Hapi hangs back at his side, quiet. With her blood-red hair bundled under a kerchief, she can pass as Duscuri. Barely. If you’ve never met anyone from Duscur, which most people here haven’t. Passing’s enough to earn her glares, curses, a rock bunged at her head which she dodges with sullen, sleepy-eyed resignation. The whole thing makes Yuri want to stab someone, but they can’t afford to get separated right now. Not if they need to make a quick getaway. 

The rest is candy. Cornelia’s soldiers talk, at least the ones acting human. Yuri skirts far, far from the others, names of all the Saints tumbling in his throat. They’re easy enough to spot, even in their human suits. Shit actors, the lot of them, just bad enough at their roles to be mockable, to be viscerally terrifying. He’s seen them before, in Adrestia, where they found Yuri’s Fetters. They hadn’t even bothered to disguise themselves in the Empire, and that should have been a warning. 

They were the ones who killed the Professor’s father, killed the professor herself, and fuck _him_ for thinking Byleth Eisner would be invincible, and fuck him harder for hoping the stories were wrong and she might still be alive. 

Some days he thinks he might hate those fuckers as much as Hapi does. And she thinks _Cornelia_ might be one. 

But the humans talk, bluster and ‘no shit, there I was.’ Whispers of a man’s screams coming from the palace dungeons. Lots of ways to make a man scream, even if that man is Dimitri, who barely let out a hiss as an apostate’s spell seared the side of his face, a grunt as a lance pierced his thigh, Linhardt too busy keeping Hilda alive to tend to him right away. 

Dimitri, who’d shielded Yuri with his own body as he blocked the blood vortex, taking hit after hit for him as Yuri tried not to bleed out. Fucking Dimitri, who smiled and said it would be okay, and it was, at least for a time.

The stories shift. A slaughter in the courtyard, mentions of ‘that fuck-off huge Duscuri.’ _Dedue_ , Yuri thinks, heart hammering in his chest. Of course Dedue would… 

They say he killed twenty men before they took him down, and Yuri swallows a mouthful of bile. Another name for his journal. A kind man who’d made room for Yuri in a kitchen hallmarked so clearly his, all despite the Rowe name sticking to the heels of Yuri’s boots. The thock-thock of a knife on a cutting board, the wondrous smell of spices Yuri’s palate can barely handle. Few enough words. Something a lot like peace.

Fuck everything and the piebald horse it rode on. 

That’s when he sees the gibbets. The guards who survived Dedue’s storm on the palace. Faded royal livery, with the Blaiddyd insignia hastily stripped away. The smell of shit and decaying flesh. The living roll their eyes in fear and kiss their icons. Due to the dead and a wide berth. 

‘Shouldn’t have let him escape.’

‘Him.’ They never speak the name, and that lights a hope in Yuri’s chest more than anything else could. Dimitri, alive and broken free? It’s tentative, uncertain, no way to know for sure without scouring the dungeons, and even Yuri can’t get that deep without a year’s worth of infiltration. He curries their horses, replacing past grooms both scared and dead. Sneezes his head off. Feeds carrots to the lumbering beasts. They don’t deserve this shitstorm either, even if they make him snot up on the regular. 

It’s a lonely wretch of a time. Yuri’s a self-sufficient kind of guy, but the moments when he misses the raucous energy of Abyss come hard and fast. He misses the crude humor of his rogues, and the way the kids down below—the ones who never learned to trust easy—have come to trust him. He misses Constance’s brilliance, her brash, clueless, take-no-prisoners bluster. The way he can wind her up and let her go, and watch her break magic, reality, and basic common sense. 

He misses Balthus most of all, though he’ll never admit it. The man can be such a damned fool sometimes, and then he turns those brown eyes on Yuri, turns his soul inside out, and claims to like the bowels of it. He’s a rock, and Yuri, who’s never needed anything but the ground beneath his feet, finds himself clinging. 

He wraps those thoughts in a woolen shawl and stashes them at the back of the trunk for later. 

Until the wait pays off in gruesome coin. Rumors of an Imperial patrol torn apart. ‘Just like some beast,’ they say, and Yuri thinks, ‘or a Blaiddyd.’ He knew Dimitri had that wild streak in him. Hasn’t been that long since Remire. 

It’s enough to gamble on, provided you’re not a certain cursed Albrecht. 

“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he tells Hapi, and if she flips the gates off as they sneak past the guards in the dead of night, who the hell would blame her?

* * *

“So you thought I was joking about mud season.”

Hapi sounds smug, almost cheerful as they track through endless, monotonous pines. This really is her turf, in a way it could never, ever be Yuri’s. Whispers on the road say Dimitri’s left a trail of bodies in his wake. Easy enough to follow; gray wolves trailing a lone wolf to his den. Thing is, and this is a thing that even Yuri, city slicker that he is, knows? Wolves are pack animals. A loner’s an aberration. Best case scenario, you’ve got a cub howling to start his own pack out from under mom and dad’s heavy paw. Worst case, you get a sick, beaten-down beast, snapping teeth at prey, kin, and danger alike. 

Yuri’s going into this with the worst case in mind. He trusts Hapi to do the same, even as she crouches close to the ground, digging at the wet earth to pull out some kind of tuber. It tastes cold and sharp, horseradish crossed with verona’s second cousin. He could roast it in the coals, Yuri figures. Bring out its hidden sweetness. It’d go well with the rabbit Hapi’s managed to trap earlier. Not a lot of tools for their kitchen out here, but Yuri’s never needed much to begin with. 

“You’re quiet,” Hapi says after a while. “Usually that’s me. I don’t mind. It’s just weird coming from you.”

“Am I?” Yuri asks. The rustle of the wind in the trees scratches and distorts the sound of his own voice. “I was just thinking.”

Hapi stretches, interlocked hands pointing up toward the sky. “Planning your next gambit?”

Funny enough, he’s not. Planning’s what you do when you have control over a situation. When you have some idea of how things are likely to do down. To overthink right now, contingencies for every possibility, that’s nothing but anxiety in disguise. 

“You’re doing it again,” Hapi says. 

Something catches Yuri’s attention before he can reply, subliminal, prickling at the back of his neck. Maybe it’s the sounds of the forest, throwing different echoes from the ones he’s used to and muddling scent. Instinct takes over, and it’s enough to make him reach for his sword. Whatever it is, Hapi’s sensed it too, suddenly tense, limbering her fingers for a spell. 

All at once, the brown and green world flares into brilliant Blaiddyd blue. Yuri has seen Dimitri in action before, skilled and fearsome in running down common foes. This is nothing like that. This is Remire, the flames of the village reflecting like blood in Dimitri’s eyes. This is strike after pounding strike, and Yuri can’t begin to guess who Dimitri is seeing instead of him, as he veers hard left, feet skidding and catching on the muddy earth. 

Dodging Dimitri’s lance is harder in this unfamiliar terrain, scraggly branches hemming them in to close quarters, but Yuri’s got his tricks too. He could do this forever if he had to. He knows Hapi’s got a spell in her spooky arsenal which could freeze an opponent in his tracks. But fighting Dimitri isn’t what they came here for. 

“Hey, Didi.” Hapi’s voice shakes, but only a little. It can’t be easy, watching a friend in this state, even if she’s tougher than she looks. “Calm your tits, okay? Look, we brought you a rabbit.”

And it’s so ridiculous, her just standing there, arms outstretched, holding out the carcass like a cat treat, but maybe that’s what Dimitri needs. The fire dims. He lowers his weapon. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, and his voice is gravel, scraping thirst and disuse across the silence. 

Yuri shrugs. “Well, we are. Guess you’re just going to have to live with it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hapi's nickname for Dimitri should've been Big D. Change our minds.


	2. Can't See the Stars

Yuri-bird roasts the rabbit, and Dimitri keeps staring at her as it cooks. As they eat. Like Yuri’s melted into the trees and she’s the only thing he can see. She settles in her jacket as the night chill seeps in and bites her lip, not sure what he’s looking for.

He’s a mess, which yeah, she’d expected. Makeshift bandages over part of his face, and she wonders if there’s an eye left under there. He hunches over his food as he bolts it, curls like a wounded animal, gaunt-faced, baggy-eyed. No telling what he’s hiding under his armor, what that bitch put into his blood or his head or his soul.

After dinner, he gets up without a word and stalks off in the woods. His heavy bootprints zig a little, uncertain.

She thanks Yuri for dinner and follows him, straight through his wavering path, four footsteps for each three of his.

He’s gone up a little nearby ridge, to a lightning-felled tree that the forest hasn’t had time to replace. It’s not much of a clearing, but it’s the best view of their surroundings, letting a little moonlight in. He hisses between his teeth as she approaches, watching her warily.

“I don’t know you,” he murmurs, eye tracking back and forth, and then settling somewhere behind her. “Dedue? Why…why does she have a face?”

_ Oh, boy _ , Hapi thinks. That kind of gone. It’s not like she’d been the only kid in Cornelia’s basement—there hadn’t been tons, but she’d been there a while. She’d seen some of them go places. She’s still wearing her kerchief, since it’s been nippy, so she pulls that off, lets her hair spill out, and hopes the moonlight even catches it right. “Didi,” she says. “Big D. Look, I got hair too. You remember me?”

His eye catches back on her, and he’s very quiet for a time. Then: “What do you need of me?”

Hapi snorts. “Need, nothing. I kind of want you to not die? I liked you, and I don’t wanna give Cornelia that kind of satisfaction.”

His jaw tightens. “Cornelia.”

“Yeah.” Hapi swallows, forces herself to breathe, and loosens her scarf. “We were talking about her once, remember? And you weren’t sure.” She drags it down, unbuttons her collar underneath, and finally bares her throat. Tilts her head back to let the moonlight find it.

Dimitri makes a soft, strangled noise. One, two, three steps closer.

“That was her,” Hapi says. She doesn’t know how much of the detail is showing, but she knows it looks bad even at a glance. Black-ink gnarls spreading under the skin. Scars where she’d cut in, over and over. Dots of stony stuff embedded in her flesh.

Dimitri’s close, mouthing confusion, and that big gauntleted hand is hovering.

Hapi tries not to think about how many ways this could go wrong, because sometimes when one of the other kids in the basement is hurting, you just gotta let them cling, yeah? “Go ahead. You can touch.”

The leather’s cool; the armor chilly. It’s not like he can feel much through those things anyway. But he can tell she’s solid, at least, and that seems to drag him more into focus.

His hand wanders, excruciatingly careful. Brushes a lock of her hair. Brushes one of the stony bits, and she winces, because that will never not feel weird. He recoils like he’s touched a flame.

“‘S okay. It doesn’t hurt anymore, just feels weird ‘cause they’re in my skin.”

“Hapi,” he says, after a pause, and touches her shoulder, just for a moment.

“Yup. Hi, Big D.” She puts her gloved hand over his.

“You are…you’re here.”

“Yup.” She shrugs. “Sure, anybody can just say they’re real. But you gotta admit, I’m pretty solid.” Something gnaws at her, and she bites back a sigh. “Look, I…I don’t know whether I owe you an apology. It’s not like  _ I _ didn’t know who’d fucked me up. I could’ve just told you, though I don’t know whether it would’ve changed anything.”

He’s quiet for a moment, and she wonders if he’s forgotten, if whatever horrorshow Cornelia gave him has driven it out of his head. Or if it’s just the echoing loneliness of the woods. That can put you in a state too.

“I…told you not to.” Dimitri’s voice is hoarse from disuse, and he has to swallow, wet his lips. “I wanted…to be sure, I think. To not assume that she had a hand in the.” He cuts out, hollow. “Just because she.” He scrubs a hand over the unbandaged side of his face. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. Don’t carry that.”

“Okay,” Hapi says quietly. She studies the bandages, mouth twisting. They’re not the cleanest. “Look,” she says, with care, because she  _ knows _ Cornelia. “I get it. But if you do ever need healing—”

“No.” His face tightens.

“—you can ask if you need it. That’s all. It’s  _ me _ . I’m not trying to erase it all so I can hurt you again.”

He gives a full-body shudder, turtling into the heavy fur of his cloak, and stands silent for a long moment. Then, more to himself than her, murmurs, “You too…”

“Of course,” Hapi says. “It’s how she do. She cut me up a lot, and I was valuable, rare Crest and all, so she always healed me.”  _ Her _ voice has gone a little thin. Huh. It’s not like she’s shy about bringing it up, but details…well. She burrows her hands into her pockets.

“She,” Dimitri starts. His throat works. He turns, paces, shrinking into the wounded-animal hunch again, and casts her one glance over his shoulder that looks kind of desperately hurt. “She just…” His eye tracks sideways again, and latches onto empty space, though she’s guessing it isn’t empty for him.

“Didi,” she says.

He refocuses. “Why.”

“Why what? I mean, open book here, but—”

“Why are you here?”

“Well, uh. We were thinking you might need a rescue, but—”

She stops, because his face has shuttered with a wordless bark of revulsion. Well, crap. She just hit  _ something _ —

“No,” he mumbles. “No, no, no.” He rounds on her. “Go. You should go. Both of you.”

Dedue, she realizes, too late. That rescue got him killed. She chews her lip. “Well, we’re tired, so we’re not leaving right now, and you shouldn’t have to be alone out here.”

“But—” He chokes on his own words, paces off around the clearing. “But you…”

Clouds scud. A sprinkle of broken-brown pine needles, raised by the wind to roll around their ankles.

“Stay then,” he says at last, flat and sharp-edged. “See where it gets you.”

* * *

The fire’s flickering down to embers by the time Hapi returns. She’s retied her scarf, huddled into the jacket she’s donned for the night. It’s pretty clear from the look on her face what she and Dimitri just talked about. Can’t have been the lightest chat. Yuri makes room for her next to him, right in the warmest spot.

“Can’t see the stars down here,” he says after a long moment. “I tried to find them the way you showed me, but the trees get in the way.” 

Hapi pulls a stick of jerky out of her pocket, gnawing on it. “They’re brighter away from firelight,” she says. “I can only spot a few myself. But you can sort of guess the constellation by the ones you see.”

“Pattern tracking.” That’s the way it is with reading a person, too. Watch them long enough and you might predict what they’ll do next. Not always. There’s no certainty in it—humans are funny like that. But enough. 

He doesn’t ask her how Dimitri’s doing. They’ve both lived and breathed Dimitri’s nebulous fate for weeks now. “You okay?” he asks her instead. 

Hapi shrugs. “You know me. I’m used to hacking up old hairballs. It’s not like I keep any of the Cornelia shit a secret.” 

Plenty of plausible deniability in the way Yuri holds out one arm. He could be stretching. Hell, he really does feel a yawn coming on. The way Hapi tilts into him is just as deniable. She’s tired. They both are, and he makes for a better pillow than the ground. Not much of an excuse for the way he wraps his arm around her, pulling her in, nor for her head on his shoulder, wisps of red hair tickling his face, nor for his lips brushing her temple.

“You’re pretty honest that way,” he says. 

He feels more than hears the dry, humorless laugh echoing in her shoulders. “Honest? Out of fucks? Same difference, right?” 

“Depends on how you define it.” They wouldn’t be out of here if Hapi was even slightly as apathetic as she pretends. 

The fire pops, shooting sparks like fireflies into the air. Somewhere behind the treeline, Faerghus’s long-lost king lurks just out of sight. It would be so easy for Dimitri to join them, Yuri thinks, except that it wouldn’t be easy at all. With the raw, angry fear in his eyes, it might be the hardest possible thing they could ask of him. 

* * *

Dimitri wakes them before dawn. “Be ready,” he tells them. “The ones I’m hunting will be here soon.” Which clears up nothing, even as Yuri comes fully alert. Beside him, Hapi blinks owlishly. He’s pretty sure he’s never seen her yawn, but she really looks like she wants to. 

They move silently through the underbrush. Yuri’s forced to give Dimitri some credit. Guys his size tend to be full of themselves and make too much noise, but he’s as quiet a stalker as they come. Intent. 

It only takes ten minutes of walking before Yuri spots a telltale flash of crimson. An imperial patrol. The urge to mouth ‘are you crazy’ at Dimitri mounts. The answer’s obvious, so he zips his lip. They don’t need two fights right now. The one they’re about to walk into is more than enough. 

From his cover, Yuri counts about thirty soldiers, armed and ready. No cavalry or fliers beneath the thick canopy of the forest, which is something of a blessing. Fliers, especially, they’re unequipped to deal with. 

And then there are the mages in their beak-like masks. Cornelia’s allies. Six of them, all told. Too many for this kind of battalion, which can only mean one thing. They’re out in force, looking for Dimitri as he looks for them. 

They won’t have long to plan, not by the hard, empty look in Dimitri’s eye. Hapi’s already got a Miasma trained on an armored knight, and who the fuck sends armored units into the forest? Fucking dark mages is who. No offense, Hapi. 

Yuri singles out an archer and moves in for the kill, right as Dimitri roars into action, barreling straight for the mages. His spear punches through one of them with a sickening squelch. Blood spatters the ground, turning brown on muddy impact. 

Yuri cuts down his opponent, moves on to the next, smells smoke and ozone. Dark magic. Nothing new for him, and for a split second, Yuri assumes it’s one of Hapi’s spells going off. Then it slams square into Dimitri, sludgy and corrosive. The inverse flash of it sears Yuri’s retinas. Another follows on its heels, shrieking like wind in a well. Yuri’s warning shout is lost in the din as he runs through a barrel-chested man with an axe, adrenaline singing a wild countermelody in his ears. 

The shrieking spell—Banshee, Hapi had called it—roots Dimitri where he stands. Yuri sees the muscles in his neck cord as he fights its pull. An enemy swordsman makes the mistake of coming too close, striking at Dimitri while he’s incapacitated. Dimitri crushes his throat one-handed. He falls like an empty suit of clothing, like a tree in a storm. 

Yuri suppresses a shudder. Could have been him, this enemy soldier with his close-enough weapon and slight build. Better pray to the Goddess Dimitri’s capable of recognizing an ally in his rage. 

Another flash of darkness and ozone, friendly this time, shatters an arrow heading straight for Yuri’s throat. He could have dodged that, he thinks. He hopes. What’s done is done, no sense in chewing the past to slivers. This is all part of fighting with others. They watch your back, you watch theirs. It’s a delicate trust exercise, one Yuri’s still getting good at. 

Speaking of: Hapi’s doing all right for herself. She’s found some cover, and the knight she’d initially targeted lies tin can-still. Others around her look worse for the wear. Miasma works a lot like sulfuric acid. It’s a nasty way to go. Hapi can be squishy—Yuri’s leery of leaving her on her own—but right now his priority’s making his way toward Dimitri. Big guy’s been taking an awful lot of hits. He acts like they’re nothing, but even he’s got his limits. 

Not that being a smaller target saves you the trouble. Too many idiots think they can take him in one hit. Yuri dodges a lance swing, sends a rotor of wind into the lancer’s face. Slits a throat without ever knowing what its owner might look like with their helmet off. That’s the cost of surviving. Like as not, someone else will die in your place. 

He makes it to Dimitri’s side at last, and yeah, he’s starting to look rough around the edges. Yuri doesn’t risk surprising him. Instead he waits until Dimitri’s one hot eye fixes on him. Watches it narrow in recognition before touching him. 

Yuri’s never been a man of faith, not in any of the traditional ways the Church might count, but the Goddess dogs his steps all the same. Her magic flows through his hands, and if its conduit is endless cold rage at the world’s myriad cruelty, She doesn’t seem to mind. The afterglow of it lingers, even as it seeps into Dimitri’s wounds, aging them closed. 

“Don’t waste your time,” Dimitri growls. 

“Then fucking stop complaining,” Yuri tells him. Left to his own devices, Dimitri’s reckless attitude is liable to waste their lives as well as their time. “Give me a boost.” There’s an archer he doesn’t like the looks of harrying Hapi. Who’s just out of slingshot range, wouldn’t you know it? Add Dimitri’s strength, however, and you’ve got yourself a fix. 

Dimitri’s quick on the uptake. Normally anyone who grabs the back of Yuri’s shirt like that would get gutted in seconds. This time it’s exactly what he’s after. As Dimitri heaves him into the air, Yuri sucks in a breath and folds the space around him. This is thief magic, Abyss magic, no standard array taught in any classroom. He’d learned it below from a Dagdan gremory. Her thick accent still weaves through the spell-words inside his mind. 

He lands in Hapi’s footsteps, staggers only slightly, and engages to the dulcet sounds of Hapi swearing as his trick dumps her on her ass. Whoops, okay. The mid-air transfer could use some work. 

She swivels to snipe a mage on Dimitri’s blind side, far-ranged death at her fingertips. The mage slumps back, her own spell going wide. Dimitri dispatches her and whirls to stare at Hapi, rabbit-tense. He still thinks and moves like a two-eyed man, Yuri realizes. That mage would have  _ had _ him. 

More, he moves and thinks like a man fighting alone. Hapi’s aid hits as hard as the spell would have, piercing the earth of his conviction. 

Hapi rises, and a moment too late, Yuri sees she’s got her flank wide open. An axe comes crashing down, and Yuri’s throat freezes in a chokehold of solid ice. 

Dimitri’s lance takes the strike with a clang and a splinter. He grunts and tosses aside its now-useless halves, grabs the attacker by the wrist, and wrenches. The weapon falls from nerveless fingers, the soldier’s scream cut short by Dimitri’s fist liquifying his face. 

The woods go quiet. He can hear Hapi’s monotone “thanks,” interrupted only by the sound of her gagging. Not like Yuri feels that much better about it. At least he’s not getting a full frontal view. 

Only then does he realize they must have won. 

“Did you get what you wanted?” he asks Dimitri, who barely acknowledges him, lost in thought once again. Bodies litter the ground, like supplicants at his feet. Everything about Dimitri seems so hollow and fragile in this moment. 

“Guess not,” Yuri answers his own question, and goes to clean off his sword.


	3. Pattern Tracing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be advised that we have updated the tags to reflect Dimitri.

“He was real scared of us getting hurt,” Hapi tells him in the aftermath. 

Yuri listens, chin propped up on one hand. “Sure had a funny way of showing it,” he says. Part of him—the paranoid asshole part, which is to say the part that’s kept him alive so far—wonders if Dimitri had been testing them. Pit them against that patrol. No warning, no strategy. See if they survive. The way Dimitri fought, _he_ sure didn’t expect to. No, Yuri amends. More that he didn’t care, and that’s the scary part. 

Hapi’s mouth does that thing where he can tell she’s biting back a sigh. “Sometimes fucked up people are like that,” she says. “Doing the thing that will hurt them most.”

“Because then it will have _happened_ already, instead of hanging over their head. It’s not like I don’t get it.” Hell, it’s not like he hasn’t been there himself, or seen it in Abyss over and over again. Desperation narrows your view until there’s nothing left but the pain and the soul-searing need to either be rid of it or sink in all the way. 

“That or he thought it would chase us away for good,” Hapi says. 

“Yeah,” Yuri snorts. “Because _that’s_ what he needs right now.” He grits his teeth. “I know. I know. Not looking out for his best welfare. I guess my real question is—no, fuck, there’s more than one question.” 

He takes a deep breath. Lets it out. 

“What the hell is he doing? Would he even be willing to come with us if we offered? Who do we risk leading back to Abyss with him?” And then there’s the big one. “Let’s say we run into another patrol like that, or one tracks us.” Yuri resists the urge to rub his eyes. No sense in getting tired right now, with so much left to do. “You think he’ll sneak past with us like a good boy, or go on the attack because he sees literal red?”

Hapi flumps down to sit on a gnarled-up root. “Shit, Yuri-bird. It’s not like I can read his mind. My gut though? That says he’s not gonna look for trouble if it means getting us killed.” 

With the way he’d covered Hapi in the fight, Yuri would be tempted to believe it. Dimitri’s fucked up, but he still cares. About Hapi, anyway. She’s under his skin now. She’s important. She’s also an important part of this scraggly outfit of theirs. As long as Dimitri remembers that, Yuri’s got an in. 

“We’ve got some good news on the risks at least.” Yuri’s pacing at this point, arms swinging, hands talking as much as his mouth. “That patrol we fought. They had some—what did you call them?—’white assholes’ in their ranks. That part’s not great. But they also seemed pretty disorganized. This isn’t their terrain, and they’re not ranging far from Fhirdiad. Which, in turn, makes me think we need to get Dimitri as far the fuck out of here as quickly as possible.” 

_Like you needed the excuse_ , a small annoying voice at the back of his head whispers. Might be his conscience if he was willing to claim one. _Like saving this guy isn’t important to you. Like it isn’t fucking personal._

Which is all well and good, Yuri thinks. He’s still not risking hundreds of lives on one man. 

Which is why he needs this to work. Needs every cold and rational part of himself onboard, so that he can pull this off with zero casualties. Well. Zero casualties he cares about at any rate. He doubts the guys back in that clearing will be the last he’ll have to stab before this is over. 

And speaking of gruesome murder and its enthusiasts… “We also have to think about security once we’re back in Abyss. Here’s another piece of good news: No Vestra spies on our turf. Hubert’s as entrenched Adrestian nobility as they come. He just doesn’t have the channels for working with anyone who can fake Abyssian. He can still outsource a hit, but we’re unlikely to be dealing with anyone deep-cover.” 

This much Yuri’s checked and triple-checked. One of the times having Adrestian connections comes in handy, loath as he is to call on them. The Empire’s let Abyss entirely be as far as Yuri can tell. 

“So Edelgard won’t hear about Dimitri the moment we get home.” Hapi chews thoughtfully on a loose thumbnail. “Damn. She was actually pretty nice to me, too. I’m still not over it.”

Yuri bumps her shoulder with his. “And people wonder why we have trust issues.”

“Right?” Hapi gives him a wan smile. “You know I can cover our tracks, right? No one’s gonna follow us. At least if we stick off-road.”

“You know we couldn’t do this without you, right?” Yuri tells her. 

Hapi makes a face. “Ugh, you’re being sappy. It’s gross. Stop it.”

“Fine,” Yuri says. “You’re an asshole who’s making us trudge through no man’s land and I don’t like you. Better?” He dodges a half-hearted swat, grinning. “You know, we’re gonna smell great by the time we see a bathhouse again.”

“We already smell great,” Hapi retorts. “We just lie to ourselves so we don’t have to deal with it.” 

“So, about Dimitri...”

“He smells the best of us all.” 

Yuri brushes off his hands. “And that’s my cue right there.” Only one way to answer the most burning questions. “Time to go have a heart-to-heart with the perfume model himself.”

“Want me to come with?” Hapi asks. 

It’s tempting. Dimitri trusts her. But if Yuri flubs what he’s planning, he’d rather be the only one Dimitri winds up hating. “I’ve got this,” he tells her. “Let me try this my way and see what happens.” 

* * *

Dimitri looks—haggard’s a kind way of putting it—when Yuri finds him again. 

“You’re gonna need a new lance,” Yuri tells him. 

Dimitri wordlessly holds one up. Must have taken it off a dead soldier. Quality looks pretty crap, but it will do until it snaps like the last one. 

“So now what?” Yuri asks, deliberately vague. It’ll be good to see where Dimitri jumps from that. 

Dimitri’s eye turns on him, a chill blue. “I go to the source,” he says. “You do what you will.” 

“The source?” Yuri asks, praying he won’t say it’s Cornelia. They are in no shape to poke that hornet’s nest right now. 

“Edelgard,” Dimitri says. Every syllable of her name drips with scarce-banked fury. 

Oh, Yuri thinks. Good, great. That’s even worse. 

“This war began with her,” Dimitri says. “Years before she set foot in Garreg Mach. It will end when my lance pierces her heart.” He bares his teeth in a snarl. “No. It will end when I tear her head from her body.” 

He probably can, with that Blaiddyd strength of his. Which is about the least relevant thing Yuri’s mind could cough up right now. “You plan to draw her out?” he asks. “Bring her here to Faerghus?”

“Waste of time,” Dimitri says. “I will not wait for her to come to me.”

To say nothing of the open war that would bring to Faerghan soil, Yuri thinks. Or the way it would leave them pincered between Edelgard and Cornelia. It would have been a truly dumbass plan, and Yuri’s glad Dimitri has dismissed it out of hand, even if his reasons are a little shoddy. 

“So you’ll go to her instead?” he hazards a guess. 

Dimitri nods gravely. 

Yuri doesn’t double-take, but it’s an uphill struggle. “What, on foot?”

The wind picks up, shockingly sharp for a spring day. If Dimitri notices the cold, he gives no sign of it. The filthy blue cloak around his shoulders billows like a flag at half-mast. “There will be other patrols,” he says. “Their mounts will serve me well enough.” 

Even a seasoned war horse would shy from him right now, Yuri thinks. Horses are nervous beasts, easily attuned to unrest in others. Dimitri is all unrest, his mind and body a war fought in microcosm. 

“And then what?” Yuri asks. “You ride to Enbarr. You get there. Then what?”

“I kill her.” Dimitri’s voice holds firm, but something in his posture gives way, broken-boned and looming. 

Well, give a man points for focus. “Back up, big guy. You’re at the gates of Enbarr. You know what happens then? Someone spots you.” Yuri holds up one hand before Dimitri can interrupt. “You can take out a troop. Sure. But this is the capital, her stronghold.” 

Dimitri laughs, bitter. “You really think she gives a damn about my whereabouts? You can’t be that naive.” The words crack between his teeth, a raw, particular hurt. This is personal, all the attendant cliches about love, hate and indifference in a single sentence. Edelgard was his friend once. Close, by the way he’s acting. Not the kind of betrayal you ever forgive-and-forget. 

It’s the sort of betrayal to leave you blind if you’re not careful. 

“Do you think Hubert wouldn’t have spies at every corner, squinting after every man who looks like you?” Yuri shakes his head. “Nah, he’s way too good at his job to let you slide.” 

“I will manage.” From the way Dimitri says it, Yuri can tell he’s just been shut down. Dimitri’s not interested in hearing criticism. Which is a shame, because criticizing him until it sinks in is exactly what Yuri’s here to do. 

“Can I be blunt?” Dimitri doesn’t deign to reply. “That was a rhetorical question. I’m going to be blunt.” He looks Dimitri square in the eye. “Your plan is hot garbage.”

Dimitri glares at him. “What makes you think your opinion is relevant.”

And Yuri’s been trying to play it smooth, swear-to-the-Goddess he has. But the frustration churns in his gut, bypassing anger, and alchemizing into honesty.

“Because I want you to live.” Damn it. He never truly believed Dimitri was dead; he’d been right not to. To lose him now, when they are so close…

Yuri’s not sure he could forgive himself for that. And yeah, sure, who gives a shit? His peace of mind’s never been a priority. 

But the boy he once knew deserves better. 

For the first time since they started speaking, Dimitri looks away, his face a crumbling mask of shattered glass. Yuri holds his breath, so hideously close to getting through—only to watch the mask reform in jagged stone. 

Yuri can feel the edges of his own fear, knows how they cut, but he takes a slice anyway. “Do you actually want to kill Edelgard, or just say you tried? Because—and take this from someone who’s actually committed cold-blooded murder—you need a plan. A real fucking plan, which you may have to throw out the window when the shit hits, but you’ve got to have it anyway. And before you have a plan, you’ve got to poke holes in all your rough drafts. Because if you fuck up, you’re dead. And if you’re dead, you’re useless.” The dead cannot act. That’s on the living. Too late, Yuri realizes how his words came out wrong, but it’s too late to take them back now. 

Dimitri’s lip curls mirthlessly. “Cold-blooded you say? I don’t think you are capable.”

Could be some truth to it, Yuri thinks. He’s killed nonetheless, and will do it again before he’s through. “You’d be surprised.”

Dimitri looks unimpressed. 

“Let me offer you a better deal,” Yuri says. “You come back with Hapi and me. We’ve got the resources to keep you hidden.” Or Claude does, at any rate. Yuri could probably swing it as things stand, but that’s a contingency. “Meanwhile, I get my people out there. We infiltrate. We get intel, find their weak spots, sabotage ‘em until they hurt. We take back this war.” We take back Faerghus, he doesn’t say, remembering the gallows smell of Fhirdiad and half-afraid Dimitri won’t care.

“To what end do you need me alive?” asks Dimitri. The low rumble of his voice shakes Yuri’s bones, splinters jabbing at his heart. How do you explain to a friend that them being alive is more than enough on its own? 

But that’s not all of it, is it? Faerghus looms, East and West, bleeding and chanting all the promises Dimitri once made back at him. If I were king, Yuri thinks. But he’s not. That’s never been an option for him. For most people, really. 

A king belongs to his country, and that’s just another chain the world hangs on you. Another brick on the seesaw of using and being used. 

When did the iron duty of Faerghus, the quid-pro-quo of Adrestia, seep into Yuri’s blood and bloom there like algae in summer? When did he start thinking of friends in terms of what they could do for him, what he owed them in return?

It’s an old flaw, crooked and aching. Balthus has called him on it before. _So you’ve noticed it_ , he thinks. _Good. Now fix your shit._

“No end,” Yuri says, and it’s not a lie. He’ll twist and crumple it into truth if he has to. 

Dimitri remains silent for a long time. “I will not accompany you,” he says at last. 

And there they stalemate. And Yuri, who hates long odds, gambles on tracing the patterns in the sky. 

“Then this is where we part ways,” he says. “Hapi and I needed to see you were okay.” He isn’t, any fool can see that. Which only makes the next move, the necessary asshole move, worse. “We won’t follow you on a suicide run. We can’t. Too many people need us back home.”

Is that regret he sees sparking in Dimitri’s eye before he closes it against the cold? “So be it,” Dimitri says, and turns on his heel. “We both leave tomorrow.”

* * *

Dimitri sits in the circle of his father’s cloak and watches the sun drop slowly through the trees.

He’s found another fallen tree. He likes those: close to the deep dark shelter of the woods, but still a sky to see. Not like—before.

His wounds ache, itch furiously, except for the one Yuri had closed. An indulgence. Warmth under his skin that he doesn’t deserve.

The sunlight bathes him in gold. Father’s quieter by day, of course. They all are. He basks in the echoing silence, stirred only by the noises of stray wolves putting together dinner, far down by the campfire. The smell is faint, mouth-watering. He swallows hard; it would only taste like ashes.

Dedue’s voice comes dim with the stretching shadows of the pines. _Go. Your majesty. Go now._ His last words, over and over.

 _We both leave tomorrow_ , Dimitri had said. A moment of weakness. He could have stalked off then, left these fools who had come only to mock him. Traveling by night or day makes little difference to him. Sleep, as always, is another enemy. So he waits.

He keeps thinking of Hapi’s eyes, deep red-black in the moonlight. The way she’d bared her throat. He—doesn’t think of Cornelia dragging hot iron down his chest—he doesn’t, it doesn’t matter, there was nothing that irrelevant woman could do to him that would hurt more than Duscur, than El—

When he lifts his head from his cloak again, shaking, the sky is a deep blue and the cooling breeze whispers dark through the pines.

 _No end._ He keeps thinking of Yuri’s face when he said that, cruel smile gone, inscrutable. Absurd. Yuri’s expectations had been no less high, he remembers dimly, in that time which has been torn up and washed away like gossamer. The time when he thought he knew living people.

Two troublesome mysteries have bundled down by the dying fire, little balls of traveling cloak, tufts of red and lavender colorless in the moonlight.

He wonders how much pressure from his thumb would crack their faces.

He shudders, stomach roiling.

 _Go to Enbarr and crack HER face_ , Glenn hisses. _What are you waiting for? You’re nothing but a rabid boar anymore._

To run his course. Die foaming or be put down.

He doesn’t want to, and the thought is dim and faraway, and still his whole body shudders in revulsion. _I want you to live_ , Yuri had said, and the dead scream, full-throated. Selfish. Delusional wretch, to think he shouldn’t die. He’s taken long enough to join them, ungrateful son that he is. Yet—yet he can’t _just_ join them, can he? He has to finish things first. Take his revenge. If—if he truly has no chance of taking Edelgard’s head like this—

He keeps thinking of Hapi’s magic, the darkness-eaten corpse lying on his blind side.

Thirty bodies should be nothing to him. He’d been— _weak_ , Father pronounces. _If you cannot find the power to avenge me, you may as well die in the dirt with us._

The axe coming for her ribs. Somebody else he could have taken with him. He hadn’t even thought that _could_ hurt anymore, not with Dedue looming blood-drenched in the sky.

He bundles tighter, sinks towards that wretched haze which passes for sleep, and shakes the night away.

His head snaps up in early dawn to the crack of a twig.

The fire’s smothered. Two wolves pad to the horizon, returning to their trail after sniffing their wounded stray. The mud is filling their branch-scuffed bootprints back in. Soon they’ll vanish into the woods.

His chest feels like it’s trapped under a fallen steed, heaving for air in the dirt, and he trembles raw with hunger. The dead are silent, fading in the white of dawn and the exhausted resignation of waking. Another soft crack as Hapi brushes a tree branch aside, letting them both pass two more paces out of sight.

The hem of his cloak drags heavy with mud as he stands, and he shivers as the cool morning air flows in, and takes a step forward before he’s realized it. Two.

He hates every fiber of his being as he takes the third, but at least he can breathe again.


	4. To Till the Wounded Soil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it wasn't obvious, yeah, we're absolutely handwaving that Cindered Shadows happened back during the school year.

Dimitri follows them for an entire day before either of them dare acknowledge him. Ignoring him is a mutual understanding with Yuri, at least, which Hapi is pretty grateful for. She makes sure to forage enough for dinner for three, and they leave it out like Big D’s a stray cat. “If a bear shows up,” she tells Yuri, “let me deal with it.”

Yuri is dubious, because city-slickers don’t know that bears are big scaredy-cats. The stray cat is differently dubious when he slinks up to the fire all wolf-gray and wary. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t wanna,” Hapi says. “‘S okay. You can get warm.”

That night, he grabs a bite of food, leaves. And the next. But in the morning, they wake to a gray and blue bundle curled by their burned-out fire. He looks tiny for a man that big, huddled up like that. Not peaceful in sleep at all.

Not that he even sleeps that much. At least their night watch is mostly covered, if punctuated by mumbling. Seems like the stuff he’s seeing gets worse at night.

“Also,” Yuri points out quietly, “sleeping that little will make you dream when you’re awake. At least I assume that’s why somebody would hallucinate.”

“Mm. So will being alone for long enough.” Yuri-bird gives her a strange, quiet look, so she shrugs and reaches down to fidget with the soft spring grass. “It’s better outside, at least. There’s stuff, even if there aren’t people.” She’d never seen imaginary people in the woods. Just had to learn what was actually an animal in the bushes and what was her brain filling in an empty wilderness with something alive. If being lonely actually hurt her, she’d’ve died from it before she got stuck in Abyss, right?

Being lonely hurt Didi, she’s pretty sure. He circles their fire sniffing for food and friendship, but only allows himself a scrap, and retracts under his cloak to gulp it down guiltily. It’s a familiar mood.

He follows them into the mountain foothills, slow going over rocky slopes with the abandoned road to Garreg Mach winding below them, too open to be seen on. Finally, with more than one careful check of their surroundings and the sky above, they skitter down the scree-slope into the ravine. Didi prickles as he recognizes the place, head swiveling.

“The golems haven’t given us trouble since the business with the chalice,” Yuri says, even as he steps over furrows in the earth ploughed by those giant swords, now overgrown with grass. “This way through the bushes. We’ve built up a screen to hide the door.”

He keeps his voice light, leading the way, but Hapi can see the tension between his shoulders. Last chance for Didi to bolt before coming in from the cold. Well. The late spring.

Dimitri shifts, wedged amongst bushes, as Yuri undoes the locks, and hesitates for a long moment as the dark cool mouth of Abyss opens.

Hapi turns, hesitates, then offers, “You can take off when you need to. But it’s a good place to hide out. Kinda the point and all.”

Yuri taps his toe. Hapi passes out of the sun, and after a long moment, ducking his head a little in the doorway, so does Dimitri.

* * *

The empty tunnels pass in silence, but to Hapi’s relief, those heavy footsteps keep pace behind them. At least until they’re deep enough in to start seeing people. They’re still in the tunnels, not yet to Burrow Street and the rest of the old town, where the handmade huts and the furnished squats house the regulars that stuck around after the war started. But the sprawling tunnels are getting freshly colonized, bedrolls and scrap-tents lining the walls, sullen and wary folk eyeing them.

“This,” Dimitri says slowly, stopped in his tracks. “Is this new?”

“Mm. We’ve had newcomers,” Yuri-bird says. “Refugees from the war. From all over, but especially Faerghus.”

Some of them are Adrestian, Hapi’s pretty sure, but he’s strategically leaving that out. A lot of churchy types who got uprooted by Eddy’s campaigns, or who fled the Empire in fear that they’d be up against a wall or whatever. Even some staff and squires from Garreg Mach. It’s honestly been pretty satisfying to watch them go wide-eyed down here in the dirt as they see what shit’s really like.

And most of them don’t know Yuri-bird that well. That changes once they turn onto Burrow Street proper. One of the short-stuffs spots him first, jumps up and down and waves with a yell of his name, and heads turn—other kids, adults. Didi hunches into his cloak, letting his hair fall over his face, and Yuri sighs indulgently and allows himself to be welcomed. Kids. Some of his rogues. The furry con artists pad out from their usual camp near the Rose’s back door, meering in case they have rabbit left in their pants. They warily circle the big twitchy guy. And, as usual, hiss at the smelly monster girl and love all over Yuri because they make him sneeze. Adorable assholes.

Didi’s watching the lord of Abyss work, Hapi realizes. Quiet through the fall of his unkempt hair, but his eye doesn’t leave Yuri.

“Eyyy,” rings a familiar voice through the busy street, and Balthus saunters up with a meat skewer in one hand. “Good t’see you, boss.”

Constance scampers in his wake, berating him to come back and finish something or another, and then she grinds to a halt, eyes widening. “Goodness, you actually managed it! Welcome back, Pr—”

Big D _twitches_ , Yuri-bird stiffens, and B promptly pulls a cube of meat off his skewer and stuffs it in Coco’s mouth, which might actually be the smartest thing he’s ever done. She chews like a disgruntled frog, nose wrinkling, and Hapi takes the chance to peel off from the boys and drape on her.

“Balthus!” Coco explodes as soon as she swallows. “You uncouth rogue! You know full well I have no love for meat—”

“Didi’s gotta lay low for a bit,” Hapi says quietly, and Coco blinks, curls bouncing against Hapi’s cheek. “And he’s pretty fucked up. Give him space to chill out, yeah?”

“Ah—yes, of course. Indeed, how ludicrous it would be for the deceased prince of Faerghus to be here in Abyss? Even the great Constance von Nuvelle can be mistaken from time to time.”

“I can’t guarantee we’ll be able to find you a bed,” she hears Yuri saying quietly to Didi. “You saw what the hallways are like.”

“I have no need of one,” comes the unsurprising and surly reply.

“There’s a soup line outside the Rose twice a day, and they’ve expanded the baths down in Chrysalis Row. They’re pretty busy, but anyone who smells like you can part a crowd even here, my friend.” Big D stares at him blankly. “Beyond that, don’t start a fight, don’t put anything down anywhere if you want to get it back, and find me or my Wolves if you need anything.”

“Yeah,” Hapi says to Coco. “I guess ludicrous is one way of putting it.”

* * *

The first thing Yuri does as soon as he manages to extricate himself from the mob is stick himself in a bath and not come out for a truly disgusting amount of time. Being the boss gotta have some perks, after all. The second thing would be to go find Balthus again, but the man’s already waiting for him in his quarters. Not a lot of folks can say they’ve got keys to the apartment Yuri’s appropriated for himself down below. Current count’s three, in fact. His mom would be the fourth if she ever came to Garreg Mach. That’s about it. 

There’s something gut-wrenchingly comforting about seeing Balthus’s oversized frame taking up half the couch. He raises a hand in greeting and doesn’t bother getting up, shifting over to make room when Yuri joins him. “Your hair’s still wet,” he says with a stretch and a ruffle. 

Not coincidentally, ‘four’ is the number of people allowed to fuck with Yuri’s hair. Again counting his mom. Some old ladies might be able to get away with it. Because they’re old ladies. What are you gonna do, tell them no?

A smile tugs at the corners of Yuri’s mouth. “You gonna tell me I’ll catch a cold?” 

“I dunno, pal,” Balthus says with a laugh. “Those colds can be pretty quick.” 

“I’m quicker.” Yuri grunts as Balthus pulls him in for a bone-crunching hug. Well, _something_ definitely goes ‘crunch.’ It might be Yuri’s dignity as a snarl of muscle above his ribs finally unkinks and the grunt turns into a whimper. 

“Shit.” Balthus whistles, low. “What’ve you been sleeping on, rocks?”

“Roots and pine needles,” Yuri says. “You were close, not bad.” 

Balthus grins. “Do I get a prize?”

“You get to help me unfuck the rest of my back. Does that count?” Balthus’s thumbs dig in between his shoulder blades by way of an answer. Yuri closes his eyes but doesn’t relax entirely yet. “Nothing new to report according to our Abysskeeper, huh? Would you sign off on that?”

“It’s been pretty quiet,” Balthus says, in that carefully careless tone which suggests he’s only had to dodge maybe one assassin while Yuri was gone. Someday Yuri’s going to shank his fucking stepmom. It’d be easy enough. Only reason he hasn’t done it yet is Balthus himself. He claims it would fuck up his little bro, which, fair enough. Not the kid’s fault his mom’s a bitch. “Look at you, though. You bagged yourself a prince.”

“Told you I would,” Yuri says. It’s meant to come out smug, but the tired bleeds through. “I’ll get a letter out to Claude tomorrow. He’s gonna want to know about this.” 

“Think you can trust him with this?” Balthus asks. 

Yuri turns it back around. “Do you?” 

After a moment, Balthus nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Yuri gets the sense Claude’s run afoul of Balthus’ occasionally terrifying insight, the way Yuri himself had. His condolences to the man. It can be a fucking lot. 

“Then yes,” Yuri says. 

“And after that?” Balthus asks quietly. Well. Quietly for Balthus. 

Yuri winces as Balthus finds another sore spot. “We hang tight,” he says. “Give Dimitri a bit of a breather.” Before… However that goes. Depends on where Claude jumps, and what Dimitri does with that.

Balthus tips up his face to study it. “Oof. That bad, huh?”

“Pretty bad.” It’s an understatement. It will do. “Kiss me so I don’t have to think about it right now?” 

Something empty and echoing inside Yuri’s chest fills out and pumps fresh blood as Balthus’s callused fingertips settle at the back of his neck and he leans in to press their lips together. Have they really been together long enough for this to be as easy and simple as it is? A few months shouldn’t make that kind of difference, but what does Yuri know? Just that he can’t tell the up and down of it anymore. 

“Look at you,” he teases as they pause for breath. “Doing what you’re told for a change.” 

Balthus laughs. “I do if it suits me.” He groans when Yuri gives his hair a good hard tug. “Yeah, like that.” 

Yuri’s teeth flash. “Fighting words, Albrecht.” A dangerous game to play with someone who knows all your sensitive spots. 

Goddess, he’s missed this. This man, and the way he’s sprawled all over Yuri’s life, trusting him like it’s nothing. Teasing Yuri and riling him up. That broad, goofy smile when Yuri’s teeth dig into his throat, the way he struts open-shirted with Yuri’s marks all over his chest. The low, steady rumble of his breath and the gentle, inexorable contagion of his pleasure. 

The world doesn’t exactly fall away, but the weight of it eases. That’s the part Yuri never expected.

“What about you?” Balthus asks, a few minutes of making out and several bite marks later. He’s still finger-combing Yuri’s hair. It’s mostly dry by now, lightweight enough it never sogs up too badly. “You’ve got that look on your face. The ‘breather’s gonna be short’ kinda look.” 

“I’ll be going to Western Faerghus,” Yuri says. “Once I hear back from Claude, one way or the other.” He hadn’t entirely admitted that would be his plan, even to himself, until the words were out of his mouth. Some part of him must have known though. The part that’s known since Fhirdiad. He drags his fingernails over the nape of Balthus’ neck, eliciting a contented growl. “You ever hear the legend of the Fisher King?” he asks. 

“Nah. Is this a Faerghan thing?” Balthus drapes an arm over his shoulders and cozies in to listen. 

“Very Faerghan,” Yuri says. “You see, there was a king once. Not even a king of Faerghus, this was before Faerghus existed. Just a king. Or maybe an Adrestian emperor, and we just call him a king. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, this king got hurt pretty bad. And as his wounds festered, the kingdom fell to drought and war. It got pretty fucked.”

“Did they ever fix it?” Balthus asks. 

Yuri scoffs. “Way to ruin the pace. But yeah, they did. I mean, it’s not like that kingdom used to be Aillel or some shit. It’s not that kind of story. Anyway, they said Saint Cethleann healed the king, or maybe one of her descendants did. And when he walked again, the land bloomed under his feet.” 

“That sounds way too optimistic for Faerghus.”

“Fuck you,” Yuri says. “We’re not all icy underworlds and sin. There’s porn like you wouldn’t believe, if you know where to look.” 

“Ain’t there always,” Balthus says fondly. 

“You’ve seen Dimitri.” They’ve all seen Dimitri, wounded wreck that he is. “That’s what Faerghus is like right now.” 

“So what you’re saying is, you fix Dimitri, you fix Faerghus?” 

“That was the idea,” Yuri replies. Some fool part of him might have actually believed that, when he and Hapi first set out. “But the real world’s not that easy. You can’t just snap your fingers or have faith and make a man okay. Much less a country.” Faerghus is caked with blood like Dimitri’s gloves after a battle. Shadowed and dark like his one eye. “There’s work to be done,” Yuri says. And Dimitri, even if he helps, is just one man. He won’t be anyone’s miracle. You need ploughmen, common as dirt, to till the wounded soil. 

“Western Faerghus, huh?” Balthus rests his chin atop Yuri’s head. “Just don’t tell me you plan on going it alone, Boss.”

“Of course not,” Yuri says. “I’m not stupid. And I know just the man to start with.” 

“That’s good,” Balthus says. Like he’s any better at asking for help when he needs it. They really do deserve each other, don’t they? Balthus ducks his head to kiss Yuri’s ear. “But you’re not going anywhere yet, are you?”

Yuri smiles, a warm, familiar heat stirring in his belly. “No,” he says. “Not yet.” 

* * *

Hapi waits until an odd hour to hit the baths, because yeah, she’s pretty perfumed, but she’s been worse, and she just wants to take off her scarf and marinate in peace. But even at an odd hour, there’s a little commotion milling outside. “Some oversized crazy fuck is hogging the tub,” the old mage who stokes the fires is grumbling. “ _And_ getting pus everywhere.”

“Aww, Big D,” Hapi says, frowning, and ambles inside.

“Miss Hapi,” somebody calls after her. “He’s pitching a fit if anybody tries to—”

“Nah, I know him, it’s fine.” Since when had she become Miss Hapi? Fuck, the shorties are spreading it around. It’s weird.

Inside there’s a familiar sprawl of smelly cloak and shed pieces of black armor, a disaster trail leading to the tall scraggle of naked Didi, waist-deep in the steaming tub, dabbing carefully at his chest. He hunches, turning with a snarl at the sound of footsteps, and then goes still.

“Wow, yeah,” Hapi says. “That’s a lot of pus. Must’ve hurt like fuck under your armor.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dimitri says, animal-frozen and wary as she comes a little closer. She can’t even quite tell what the wound was originally, though it doesn’t look like a sword slash or anything, just an infected blotch. Arrow, maybe? It’s got friends. There are wounds on his back too, mostly healed, though some are still an angry red in the dim torchlight. Long, criss-crossing stripes that she doesn’t like the look of.

“I…should probably tell you to go get cleaned up with a doctor or something,” Hapi ventures. “Except we barely have a doctor, and also, well. Like I said, I get it. Somebody’s gonna have to scrub all the gunk out of the tub though.”

Dimitri twitches, once. “Oh,” he says, voice quieter.

“I might be able to do it with a spell. Uh. Assuming it doesn’t also dissolve the wood.” Also he probably wouldn’t want to be here for the tell-tale nose-piercing stink of miasma melting things clean. It still makes her skin crawl even if she’s casting it, and he’s a lot more raw. Though Cornelia might not even have bothered to sterilize anything when she was fucking him up.

He studies her, wet hair plastered to his cheek. The stained bandages on his face are still there, like he was saving the worst for last, and he looks more tired than anything else. “Just do it if you’re going to,” he mutters at last, turning away.

“Not until you’re done with the bath, dummy. Unless you mean healing.”

“Why else would you insist upon being here?”

“Making sure you didn’t throw down with the bath mage? She’d fuck you up. But yeah, offer’s still on the table, and it’s probably a good idea, given.” She waves vaguely at the mess. “I just don’t want to be her about it, you know?”

Something runs through Dimitri’s body head-to-toe, and he stares at her a little wild with his one bright eye for a long moment. Then swallows a few times. “Go…ahead.”

She blows out relief through her nose and waves vaguely for him to get closer. At least he’s not getting weird about being butt-naked in the bath. Not like she gives a shit.

“You…” Dimitri looks down as she focuses, biting her lip, dragging power together in uncomfortable patterns that gleam at her fingertips, lighting her hand like she’s watching a fire through it and seeing her flesh turn all ruddy. “Didn’t heal. When we met. Even when you were all…”

“Bleeding out in a mess?” She lets the spell go, feeling like she’s squeezing it like gooey flesh out of a crayfish, and it splashes into his chest. “Yeah, I never got the hang of it when Aelfy tried to teach us. Which was a dumb thing for him to do, considering.” Light sinks in, purging infection, speeding up healing. Pus drips out; reddened skin fades; it knits into a shiny scar. Not an arrow wound after all. It hadn’t gone deep. Shiny like a burn. Ew, Cornelia.

“The professor,” Dimitri says, stiff and slow. The professor who’s still missing. Big damn hole in all their hearts.

“Yeah. It still doesn’t come natural. I don’t believe in shit. Like my magic’s not bad in general, but the shape of healing feels all wrong.” She keeps talking, a little inane, but sometimes talking at people helps when they’re all stuck up in their heads. “But you know what the silly thing is?” She squeezes out another one, lets that spread over some of the less-messy wounds, and her blood skips in her veins. Light flashes, lines echoing for a moment in midair. “Oh, there it goes.”

“Your Crest.”

“Helps with healing too. Gives me a little more juice for it, like your churchmouse, what’s her name? I’d never realized. Turn around, yeah? Your back’s not great.”

He turns. He’s silent, big raw-muscled shoulders slumped, one shiver as she spreads more magic over his back, easing out the angry red, coaxing the welts along to become more scars. Maybe with a better healer, like the churchmice or the tiny green fishgirl or whoever, it’d be tidier, cleaner. But she’s what he’s got, and he’ll have that jagged silver in his skin for—his life.

Hapi bites her lip. “Got anything on your legs?”

No answer. Until, low and exhausted, he says, “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Well, that’s how Abyss do. Nobody should be here, but here we all are, and the doors aren’t locked these days. C’mon, might as well do the whole set.”

After a moment, he picks at the bandages on his face and flinches. Then splashes water on himself and tries again. Hapi thinks about offering a hand, but well, Didi and helping have a pretty complicated relationship right now. Relatable. Eventually, gingerly, he gets all the bandages off, turns.

“Not gonna lie, Big D,” Hapi says, blinking once, “that’s pretty gross.”

He laughs, once, a startled huff. “There’s no need to be gentle. I know the eye’s gone.”

Yeah, Hapi thinks, probably because Cornelia rubbed it in. It’s a little hard to tell through the swelling, but there’s probably no eyeball left in _that_ sunken mess. “You’re lucky that mess hasn’t gotten to your brain, big guy,” Hapi says absentmindedly, and scoops up some water to wash a few last bits of detritus out of the way. Be pretty dumb to heal his hair into his face.

“Feels like it has sometimes,” he murmurs, distant. “But I was always…”

She pulls together another spell, sinks it in, and watches the swelling shrink, more angry red fade to white.

“Broken,” he finishes.

“Pff,” Hapi says, and starts gathering yet another for good measure. She’s still not tapped out, not with her Crest. “Who isn’t who’s worth knowing?”

Some of the skin she’s working on twitches, some muscle left around the jagged mess of scar sitting where his eye had been, because he’s blinked, face softening a little in surprise.

It really is a mess in there. Only so much she can do. His eyelids were savaged, raw flesh half-knit together in an uneven lump. She probably doesn’t want to know what Cornelia plucked it out with. He might want an eyepatch around normies, but honestly, the little kids in Abyss are just gonna think it’s cool.

“There,” Hapi says, and really wants to pat his wet messy head, but he’s still pretty far out there, so maybe not the best idea. “Thanks. Now wash your butt so I can wash my butt and go to bed.”

* * *

Abyss hadn’t slept while Yuri was gone. He’s got enough lieutenants to take care of whatever’s needful instead of letting it shitpile on his doorstep. Still, he’d be lying if he claimed not to enjoy making his rounds, a regular lord and master of his dank, underground kingdom. 

The Garland Moon weather’s managed to waft below ground, and the regulars he meets are in high spirits despite the sudden crowding. Even Yuri hadn’t reckoned on the numbers ‘til now. He’ll have to give his accounts another going over, make sure they have enough to pull everyone through the season and beyond. 

He’s just managed to catch Mina, the Rose’s proprietor, in a good mood and soften her up to talk food supplies when he hears shouting out on Burrow Street. An unfamiliar man’s voice rises above the din, harsh and strident. At least the man’s unarmed, from what Yuri can see when he reaches the scene, and too steady on his feet to be drunk. The target or his ire, a Duscuri oldtimer named Luza, hasn’t thrown a punch yet, but he looks like he’s considering it. That’s the scary part. Yuri’s known Luza for years, and he frankly envies the rein he’s got on his temper. Well. He’s had to learn. That part Yuri gets a little too intimately. 

Yuri strides up, making sure to throw his weight around just a smidge more than strictly necessary. The newbies don’t know who he is yet, or what he is to Abyss. Let’s cross figuring it out off their to-do list sooner rather than later. “All right. What the fuck is going on here?” 

New Guy puffs up. Yuri can practically hear him thinking, ‘who’s this scrawny streetwalker-looking thing?’ But he can see the way the crowd parts for Yuri. Good, he’s capable of picking up basic social cues. 

“This Duscuri trash—”

Something splinters, and Yuri turns to see the crown prince of Faerghus embed his fist into a market stall, just on the edge of the crowd. Shit. Fuck. Shitfuck. With Dimitri here, this can only escalate in some really unpleasant ways. 

Also someone will have to fix that stall. 

“Enough,” Yuri says, voice low and cold, loud enough to carry. _Please_ , he prays, half to the Goddess, half to Dimitri. _Let me handle this._ “Look,” he tells New Guy. “You’re from Faerghus. I get it. I’m from fucking Arianrhod. You’re used to doing things a certain way. Well, forget everything you’ve learned, because that’s not how we do around here.”

New Guy opens his mouth. Yuri slaps a hand over it. “Duscur is not your problem, friend. So don’t make trouble for my folks, or we’re gonna have to make trouble for you. You get me?” 

New Guy’s not catching on yet. Until Téa, bless her, steps forward with a few of her men, falling in line with Luza. A probably-Almyran merc, Téa remains the reason Yuri hasn’t died in a ditch several times over since fate dropped him Abyss-wards. No one’s drawn a sword yet, but this is clearly Yuri’s crew, and they clearly look like they don’t fuck around. Another reason he’s glad to have good lieutenants, ones who know how to follow his lead without being told. 

A shudder runs through New Guy’s entire frame. His eyes widen. The man is scared shitless, Yuri thinks. He’s lost his home in the last several months, perhaps seen friends and family die. Not that he’d ever realize how much that gave him in common with the Duscuri. 

Dimitri’s jaw remains set, teeth clenched and grinding. 

Carefully, Yuri lifts his hand from the man’s mouth. “Now, if you’ve got a _real_ problem, you bring it to me. Or if I’m not here, you bring it to Téa or Balthus, and they bring it to me.” He lets his face soften a fraction. “We take care of our people around here. That includes you. That includes _everyone,_ ” he says pointedly. “You, Luza, the little shit who thinks she’s gotten away with hoisting my coin.” A runty kid with several missing teeth peels sheepishly out of the crowd, dropping Yuri’s purse by his feet. He ruffles her hair, and she gives him the stinkeye. Someday she may be good enough to get the drop on him, but that day’s a long time coming. 

New Guy doesn’t nod yet, but he’s listening. 

“Okay, Luza. You tell me what happened here.” 

Luza’s mouth twitches, pulling on old scars. “He was walking. It appears I was in his way.” 

Yuri gestures at the wide street. “Plenty of room to move as far as I can see.” 

“Yes,” Luza says, inflectionless. 

“I’m sorry about this,” Yuri tells him. Someone has to. New Guy may get there eventually, but he sure as hell ain’t there yet. 

Luza shrugs “It is what it is.” 

“Still.” Yuri draws himself to his full height once again. “All right? We all good here? Anyone have a problem with anyone else?” 

Silence, and New Guy shakes his head. He probably wants to scurry as bad as the pickpocket who’s already faded into the woodwork. Yuri studies his face, searching for sparks of defiance likely to tinder into flame once the boss is out of sight. He finds none and sends a silent salute to the Goddess. _Here’s to your luck, may the cost of it never catch up with me._

“All right. Show’s over,” he says, and turns on his heel. 

Dimitri’s face is hidden in shadow as Yuri walks past. He looks better than he did yesterday, or cleaner at any rate. The messy bandages that once swaddled his face are gone, replaced with a scrap of leather over his missing eye. Dimitri looks lost in thought, but perhaps not in memory. “He’ll learn,” Yuri tells him. 

Dimitri grimaces. “He had better.”

“Anyone who doesn’t gets the boot,” Yuri says. Not that Dimitri’s presence on the scene won’t complicate _that_ as well. Tall blonds are dime a dozen, but a tall blond flaunting his Blaiddyd strength, however unintentionally? Who better to recognize him than a Faerghan expatriate? And who more likely to blab than a disgruntled one? Well, here’s hoping New Guy actually learns. 

“A second chance, but not a third?” Dimitri asks. “Is that how it works here?”

“Something like that.” Yuri keeps walking, and Dimitri follows. Good. Best to get him out of the crowd for now. “Some don’t get a second chance. Rapists. Slavers. We had a jackass once who liked butchering people for sport. That was some bullshit.” Not everyone who scatters into Abyss’s shadow has a sympathetic reason for it. Those are the throats you cut and lose no sleep over, especially if your folks will sleep the safer for it. 

Dimitri nods, something almost like satisfaction flickering across his face. “Well enough,” he says. Yuri almost expects him to walk away after that, but he remains, something jittery scrabbling in his mien. 

Dimitri’s always been an active guy, Yuri thinks. Pretty sure he’s never seen him idle, unless he was in a bad way. Like how they found him in the woods. 

Yuri pauses in front of a shipment of oil barrels that came in last night. “Help me stow these,” he tells Dimitri. 

Without a word, Dimitri lifts one over his shoulder, easy as a toy cup. 

And okay, _that’s_ a rush. Like the parting crowd earlier, but better. How many people can say they’ve told a Blaiddyd to pick up a barrel and had him obey? _Don’t let it go to your head,_ Yuri cautions himself. To Dimitri, he says, “Thank you for trusting me.”

“Who says I trust you,” Dimitri retorts.

“Trusting me to handle it?

Dimitri shrugs. “It’s none of my concern.” 

He sure hadn’t looked indifferent at the time. But whatever. Yuri’s not gonna push. Honestly, the fact that Dimitri does care may be a good sign. He desperately needs something outside of himself right now, as much and as many somethings as he can carry. Another person’s pain may wear on you, chipping away at whatever hope you have left, but it can ground you as well. Can’t lock up your knees when someone’s screaming for you to help them. 

The barrels get moved in record time. Dimitri doesn’t even break a sweat. When the work is done, he stalks away, but Yuri can’t help noticing the way his shoulders lift, as though a thick fog saturating his cloak has begun to dry and scatter in the sun.


	5. Snarling At the Bones

“And this is why you should never, ever ask Dimitri if you can experiment on him.” Yuri can’t believe he has to spell this out, but  _ Constance _ . Who is actually pouting, bless her little heart. 

“I would never harm him of course,” she proclaims. “But to stay my hand, even if I have reason to believe my magic would do him more good than harm? What a presumptuous request.”

Yuri rubs the bridge of his nose. He’s had a headache coming on all morning, sinuses jammed full of pollen and the general must of Abyss, and this isn’t helping. “Do you actually believe that, or are you just bored?” he asks. 

“How heartless do you think I am?” she retorts.

Sick thing is, Yuri’s not sure. Constance can be thoughtless as hell, trampling over boundaries left and right, but she’s still a fundamentally decent person.

“I like to cover all my bases,” he says. “Besides, I like you alive. Put his back up against the wall, and maybe he’ll see it for bluster. Or maybe he’ll defend himself, and he’s  _ Dimitri _ . You know what that means for his opponent.” Let’s pretend for half a second he didn’t wake in a cold sweat at the thought of just such a possibility, cursing himself for not having touched base with Constance sooner.

“I’m not—” He can practically see her swallow her pride, complete with chewing first. “Very well,” she says at last. “I understand what you’re saying.” She wraps a purple curl around one finger and watches as it unspools. “Hapi told me how he kills these days.” 

Yuri shakes his head. “That part’s not new.” Dimitri’s temper and its consequences have always been real, if banked. “He’s got more to fear these days, that’s all.”

Constance sighs. “His injuries were certainly grave,” she says. “But if you desire my opinion, it’s sadness I see in him, far more than fear.” She’d know, Yuri thinks. Hell if she and Dimitri don’t have more in common than meets the eye. The history of the Blaiddyd family is public record after all, and far more spoken of than what the Empire did to the Nuvelles. 

“That too,” Yuri says. “But sadness doesn’t make you lash out the way fear does.” 

“Perhaps not,” Constance muses. Her expression turns sly. “Is this why you’ve had Balthus challenge him? It certainly seems incongruous with a hands-off approach, if you ask me.” 

Yuri’s eyebrows climb straight to the top of his forehead to join his growing headache. “What do you mean, ‘challenge?’”

Constance lets out a thin, incredulous laugh. “The lug’s acting of his own volition, then. This ought to be amusing.” 

Breathing is an important part of survival, Yuri reminds himself. “So, what, he asked Dimitri to spar with him? And Dimitri accepted?” Even Constance would have sounded an alarm with a real fight on hand. 

Constance nods. “Just so. He wasn’t  _ terribly _ boorish about it, I’ll give him this much credit.”

He trusts Balthus to keep the fight somewhat discreet, at least, instead of taking it to the big arena. Not that it will matter much in the long run, with the letter burning a hole in Yuri’s pocket as of this morning. “Where and when?” he asks. 

Constance tosses her hair. “Well, Balthus originally suggested the field beneath the canyon where we fought those mechanical golems. But then I pointed out this was as good as disinviting me, and he demurred.” 

Yuri makes a face. “Also fuck those golems.” One of them nearly squished him into a paste. Would have been a downright embarrassing way to go. 

“Not to worry,” Constance reassures him. “Those fond memories may still be revisited.” 

“...Please don’t tell me you mean the room with the one that chased us. And the bandits.” And the stupid door that took Yuri way too long to pick the lock on, with Ashe pinned down out of reach. 

Constance hmphs and holds her silence. 

Yuri waits her out. 

She doesn’t last very long. “You told me not to tell you,” she sniffs. 

Yuri shoots her a wicked grin. “Well, aren’t we obedient today?”

Constance responds with a scathing glare. “Unlike the rest of you, I have manners. That is all.” 

Yuri laughs and offers her his arm. “Lead the way then, my well-mannered lady.” 

She swishes down the hall in a susurrus of petticoats, her posture perfect even now. Yuri follows, carefully steering her away from puddles where the cavern ceiling has dripped. 

They arrive a few minutes early. Hapi’s already there, perched on a wedge of mechanical rubble and watching Balthus warm up. Constance immediately trots over to join her. Yuri mulls marching up to Balthus and demanding to know what he’s doing, then dismisses the impulse. Balthus may be a fool when it comes to money, but he’s as good a judge of character as they come. Whatever he saw in Dimitri to make him decide this was a good idea, Yuri will see the results of it soon enough. 

And so Yuri spreads out his cloak, leaving a length for Constance who is far more squeamish about sitting on the floor than he has ever been. She kneels next to him after a moment, her skirts a tidy swish of white. Hapi’s ankles dangle in his peripheral vision, nudging his shoulder. Time was, Yuri wouldn’t have allowed himself this cramped and noisy closeness. He could do without it these days if he had to, but losing it would hurt. 

Dimitri’s entrance is a quiet one, the true champion of fashionably late. His eye flickers to the gathered audience, shoulders rigid with nerves before he turns, dismissing them once more. To Balthus, he gives a tight nod. 

“First fall?” Balthus says, more for their benefit than Dimitri’s. 

“As agreed,” Dimitri replies, and the fight is on. No stretching for the Maybe-King of the Icy North. Why is Yuri not surprised? Dimitri’s gonna feel that tomorrow. 

Balthus is the faster of the two, more used to the showy side of fighting, but he lets Dimitri come to him. Feet light, arms up, guarding his face: a prizefighter testing out his opponent’s first move. Getting to know what he’s made of. 

Dimitri takes the bait, striking high. His fist clangs on Balthus’s gauntlet. Yuri watches, narrow-eyed, as the worn iron takes the hit and shatters. Vajra-Mushti aside, most of Balthus’s gear is junk. He claims the important part is his fists, and he’s not even wrong. Balthus tosses the ruined armor aside, adjusts his stance. 

This is where he’d be nursing a broken wrist, if Dimitri failed to keep his strength in check. Instead, Balthus looks unharmed and downright gleeful. 

He answers with a grin, closing in to throw his weight against Dimitri’s left side, and the prince grunts in surprise at the move—hardly gentleman’s boxing. His offhand side, to boot, though also his seeing side. Even surprised, Dimitri reacts, clamping a hand over Balthus’s shoulder. They grapple, swaying, Balthus growling in exertion as he tries to break through Dimitri’s unnatural strength. 

Except that’s not his play, is it? He’s too smart for that. Sure enough, with Dimitri caught up in the struggle, Balthus can catch his unguarded right leg. One sharp sweep behind the knee. 

Dimitri flails, teetering. His hold on Balthus is what keeps him on his feet, grasping the chains slung across his chest. Yuri doubts Balthus’s feint would work a second time. Guess the King of Grappling will just have to come up with something better.

They break apart to circle one another. Balthus gives a roll of his head, a toothy smile. Dimitri’s picking up speed, finding the pulse of the fight. He pushes and takes ground, throwing punches with the sharp discipline of a well-trained fighter who’s studied boxing for two days and thinks he understands it. Balthus dodges sideways to avoid total pushback, and their fists cross like fencer’s blades.

Constance stares up at them, sharp chin nestled in her hands. “I’m witnessing an awful lot of prologue so far. How long does this usually take?” 

“This is the flirting part,” Hapi says. “The real fight’s the ‘get a room’ part.” She stretches. “What? That’s what it looks like, and you know it.” 

She’s not even wrong. You can sum up at least a third of the fights with ‘and then two guys assgrabbed in the dust for a while.’ Yuri will never be obsessed with the arena the way Balthus is, but there’s no denying a certain appeal. 

Not that this fight will go that far. Yuri’s seen first-fall bouts end in seconds when Balthus really throws his weight around, but they’re dragging it out, testing each other, playing. Dimitri swings and Balthus takes it on the chin, grunting; it leaves a red mark but draws no blood. All that head-to-toe black armor isn’t slowing Dimitri down, but the swirling cloak is in the way, and he’s red-faced, sweating in the close air of the underground room.

Yuri wonders how hard it’s going to be to get him to take off a layer or two in the summer—heatstroke’s a bitch, especially for a man used to Fhirdiad’s chill—and almost misses Balthus landing a kick that knocks Dimitri for a loop. He skids out in a swirl of cloak, gauntlet scraping on stone, but keeps his feet.

“Our nonexistent friend has left himself wide open for a grapple,” Constance observes. For somebody who only discovered an interest in hand-to-hand combat when she met the Professor, she fancies herself an expert. “At least twice. Balthus is remiss.”

“Eh,” says Hapi. “They’re just playing around, yeah?”

If he were Balthus, Yuri thinks, he’d be cautious with pinning Dimitri’s arms. All too easy to imagine Cornelia’s guards swarming, their numbers swollen enough to take Dimitri down.

Even playing around, no match lasts forever. Dimitri’s far from clumsy, but he’s in an unfamiliar ring, overdressed for the occasion, and Balthus is light on his feet for a man his size, king of his domain. It’s a careless lunge that finally does Dimitri in, barrelling at Balthus, who sidesteps with flawless footwork and swings his weight around, shoving him hard in the back. Dimitri stumbles, and the royal knee touches the floor. It counts as a loss for some fall matches, including apparently this one.

Dimitri ignores Balthus’s proffered hand, heaving to his feet on his own, but the look on his face is one of respect. “It’s not a style I’m familiar with,” Yuri hears him say as he strolls up. 

“It’s anything goes,” Balthus tells him. “You know, ‘cept for maiming and shit.” 

“The ancient school of hard knocks,” Yuri adds. “Good for sword and knife, too, and you get a great deal on the tuition.” 

“Literal hard knocks sometimes,” Balthus agrees. “For a hard head.” 

Hapi hops down from her rubble pile and helps Constance to her feet. Constance coughs pointedly as she passes Yuri, like lifting her up was his job all along and he’s one infraction from being canned. Knowing Constance, she’ll forget all about it by dinner. Or hold a grudge until they’re both old and gray. She’s never been a woman for the in-betweens. 

“Aren’t you frying in that?” Hapi asks Dimitri, gesturing at the offending cloak. 

“I’ve fought in heavier,” he tells her, which earns him something like an impressed look. Impressed for Hapi anyway. 

“Try it without and you might win next time,” Balthus suggests. “You had me worried for a few seconds there, pal.”

“Stop avoiding my injuries and you might win,” Dimitri tells him. Huh. Yuri thought that might have been the case, but it was hard to tell from a distance. 

“No chance,” Balthus says with a grin. “Not for a fun match anyway. All bets are off in a real fight, of course.”

Dimitri’s mouth thins into a line. “Do you expect one?”

“Nah. Too much work, as a friend of mine might say.” He deflects the potential conflict easy as he breathes. No chance for Yuri to even start worrying about it. If only he showed such grace with the debt collectors. 

“Congratulations,” Yuri says, something giddy and mischievous welling up inside him. “A clean victory. And to the victor…” Balthus rests an elbow on his shoulder, the added weight of it nearly making Yuri teeter. Pulling him down into a kiss is the easiest thing Yuri’s ever done. Stubble scrapes across his jaw and his chest buzzes with affection. 

“What would you have done if  _ he _ won?” Balthus asks, gesturing at Dimitri, who’s busy looking away, bright red. Embarrassed but not offended. Interesting. 

“Not slipped him the tongue,” Yuri shoots back, and that’s when Dimitri starts coughing. He really is adorable. The fact that he can still get flustered like this, after all the shit he’s been through. Seiros, he’s still so young. Still eighteen, Constance’s age, the age Yuri had been when he landed in Abyss. It makes Yuri’s heart ache.  _ We all made it through,  _ Yuri reminds himself. So will Dimitri, crackly, easily-embarrassed shell and all. 

* * *

“Had to show ‘im he wasn’t going to hurt us.” Balthus tells him later. He takes Yuri’s grilling like a champion. Must have expected it. “Not by accident, and he’s too careful for those.” 

“And if he proved you wrong?” Someone had to say it. Looks like that falls to Yuri, surprise, surprise. 

Balthus peels off his hand wraps, cracking his knuckles. “Then I’ve got the hardest head of us all. I’d weather it.”

Yuri sighs. This is just like Balthus. Such an  _ idiot _ when Yuri least expects it. Always taking blows for anyone and everyone, like a man who’s never met his limit. He knows better than to think he’s immortal. He  _ must _ . 

“Poor kid’s spooked of his own fists,” Balthus says. 

“Happens when you can rip a guy’s head off.” 

Balthus shrugs like Yuri’s not telling him anything new. “He can’t keep going like that, snarling at his own skin and bones. It’s a long war ahead of us, and a long life after that. He’ll have to fight a lot of people. Kill a lot of people too. But that’s not all there is to it. Say like a good match. Be a shame to lose that.”

_Lots of things you can use Blaiddyd_ _strength for,_ Yuri thinks. Like hauling oil barrels, or murdering a man where he stands. It’s not like Yuri’s any less capable of the latter. More, if anything. “You were right,” he admits. “He’s got this, a lot more than he thinks he does.” Has he ever seen Dimitri really lose his shit at anyone who hadn’t earned it? “I’m still gonna wring your neck if you keep taking risks like that.”

Balthus grinds his knuckles into the top of Yuri’s head. “You can try.”

Yuri glares daggers at him. “I can succeed.” 

“He’s one of us now,” Balthus says. “You know the rules. You get a new rogue, I fight ‘im to see what he’s made of.” 

And there’s the crux of the matter. “Funny you should say that.”

“Funny how?”

“Claude’s response arrived today,” Yuri says. “He’ll help us out however he can. But the way he’s talking, he can’t trust the Roundtable not to go sucking Adrestia’s dick.”

“Gloucester, I’ll bet,” says Balthus, who shouldn’t bet, except apparently where politics are concerned. “They’re right on top of Myrdin, rubbing shoulders with the Empire.” 

“Fear or avarice?” Yuri asks. There’s a world of difference between Dominic bowing his head to Cornelia and Rowe kissing her ring with the blood of the coup barely dry. 

“Hard to say.” Balthus frowns. “If it was Ordelia… Yeah, that’d be fear, no question.” He’s got some history with the Ordelias, more secretive and complicated than his camaraderie with the Gonerils, but just as important. “Thing is though, you can trust Ordelia. Dunno if I’d give Gloucester the same benefit of the doubt, especially if it lets him shoulder the Riegans out of the way.”

“What a wonderful den of vipers.” Yuri would feel right at home. His year abroad might have been a lot less shitty if he’d gone for Deirdru instead of Enbarr. “Either way, Claude’s moving cautiously. Sheltering Dimitri in Leicester would be risking both their necks.”

“So he stays?” Balthus asks. 

“He stays. Good thing he’s not fussy about his accommodations.” 

“Have you told him yet?” 

Yuri feels himself flush. He’ll never be as obvious as Dimitri about it, but that’s not saying much. “There’s no need. I never told him about writing to Claude.” It would have been another contingency, another reason for Dimitri to bolt. “I figured I’d tell him if Claude said yes. It would still be his choice,” he adds hurriedly. “But at least then it would have been a real choice, not a hypothetical.”  _ Or maybe you were hoping he would stay, stupid risks and all. Can’t look after a man who’s out of sight.  _

“Yeah, that’ll never bite you in the ass.” 

“Don’t lecture me,” Yuri snips. He’s made his nest of lies and secrets, weaving them into his second nature. If he knew how to stop—if any other version of him made any sense whatsoever—he would have done so by now. 

“Wasn’t gonna.” Balthus’s forehead crinkles. “Hey, you worry about me, I get to worry about you. That’s all.” 

Yuri looks away. “And here I thought this didn’t have to be ‘fair exchange.’” He cringes before the words even leave his mouth. “Shit, sorry, I didn’t mean that.” 

Balthus exhales, gusty and a little tired. “I know you didn’t.” 

“I mean, it didn’t even make sense as a comeback. Pathetic, really.”

“Wasn’t your best,” Balthus agrees. 

“And I’ve had some zingers.”

Balthus strokes the rise of his cheekbone with callused, familiar fingers. “Yeah, but you don’t aim those at people you like.” 

“I like you okay,” Yuri says, smiling crooked to bely the backhanded compliment. 

“Heck,” Balthus says. “Looks like I ain’t getting your best pickup lines today either.” The acid in the air is slowly easing, turning to banter and the early glimmer of subterranean lamps. 

“I’m saving those for when I get back,” Yuri reassures him. 

“Faerghus?” Balthus asks, unsurprised. 

Yuri nods. “I’ve got my bags packed for tomorrow.” He forces himself to look Balthus in the eye again. “Take care of Abyss for me, yeah?” Abyss, the Wolves, Dimitri. Yuri thinks he might go a little nuts if he didn’t have someone to watch all their backs for him. 

Balthus’s expression turns serious.  _ With my life,  _ he doesn’t say, because damned if Yuri hasn’t had  _ that _ nightmare, too. But it’s how he means it, and that’s why Yuri trusts him, if not the whole of it. “Always,” he says instead, and Yuri believes him. 

* * *

Yuri flits off for important Faerghus bird business, and the days go by in Abyss, which is to say nothing changes hour by hour except the shorties get herded off to bed and the lamps get dimmed for a time, and people say that tall scary new guy likes to pace by the underground river when everyone’s asleep. He seems to be doing okay. Leveling out. Hapi keeps one eye on him, chatters sometimes, settles back into her own life of boredom.

The early summer rains are soft and sweet, but still pretty wet, so Hapi takes the first dry day to graze in the ravine for wild onions and the little early-summer strawberries—the one for people’s cookpots, the other for her belly. It’s not like they keep anyway, since they just kinda melt into squishy blobs in an hour or two. She’ll take the last handful to Coco, she figures, so she doesn’t have to go outside. It’s a little cloudy out, but still. No good for Cocos.

Coming back to Abyss has been—kinda rough. It’s nice to be home, even if it’s weird that Abyss counts as home by now. But she’d gotten spoiled with all the outside on that little jaunt. So she might as well take all day out here, lazily picking bugs out of the onions while a few baby rabbits, cautiously tolerating her presence, nibble twitchy-nosed nearby.

The door to Abyss opens with a grind and a slam, and somebody huge bulls through the bushes, sending the rabbits scampering away with their tails high and white. It’s Big D. Hapi shoves her onion into the basket with the rest and sits there with ice in her gut, wondering if this is it—if he’ll just stride up the hill and be gone. And what would she even tell Yuri-bird when he gets back?

“Hey, Didi?” she calls, nervous.

He doesn’t answer. He slows, though, and eventually comes to a halt to huddle against the base of a tree. He’s mumbling to himself, scattered. So much for the close company in Abyss chasing the ghosts away. He’s still hurting.  _ That _ doesn’t vanish so quickly.

Hapi puts a few strawberries in her face to brace herself, leaves and all, then clambers muddy-legged to her feet to circle around on his left. “Big D?”

Nothing. She crouches, close enough to hear him mumbling. “I don’t know…I’m sorry. It’s—I don’t know if I  _ can _ do it alone, but they won’t—”

“Can you hear me?”

His head whips up at that, and he stares right through her, wild-eyed. Freezes like the bunnies had when she’d first come out.

“I don’t know how to help you,” he says at last, and sounds absolutely wretched about it. “I could…I could kill Kleiman. Rowe. After Edelgard. Avenge my family, avenge you…the one led to the other…”

Rowe rings a vague bell—right, hadn’t Freckles said something about that? At least Yuri-bird didn’t seem like he’d miss this Rowe guy if he was gone. Hapi shakes her hair into her face, but he doesn’t even focus on that this time. “Uhh.” Shit. “Who am I?”

Didi’s face crumples. “I…don’t know your name. I don’t—know any of your names. Nobody took them down.”

“How many ghosts you got following you, Big D?”

Something about that seems to catch somewhere in his craw. He blinks rapidly, eye searching back and forth. “I don’t know. So many…so many…”

They’re quieter by day—that had gotten pretty obvious when they were traveling. Maybe it just got bad in the endless dark of Abyss. Unless something in particular set him off. “Hey. Look up for me, why don’t you? Look at the cliffs. The trees and stuff.” No good to tell him to look straight into the sun, but the afternoon light is painting the side of the gorge, bright and glowing.

He lapses into silence for a long while, eye scanning the sprawling sunlit beauty above them. Sometimes his lips move, silent, or some whisper she can’t even make out. Sometimes he looks down amongst the trees, flinches, looks away.

“You came out here to see the sun, right?” Hapi says after a while.

“I…don’t know,” he says slowly. “I just ran.” He’s quiet for a time, long enough that Hapi starts worrying about what to say next, before he says, “You.”

“Me.” Okay, at least he seems to be seeing her?

“Why are you always here to mock me?”

She blinks. “Definitely not here to mock you, Didi. Uh. Dumb luck this time? I was out picking berries and stuff and you ran past me.”

He reaches out, hesitates, and she gives his hand a quick squeeze to prove that she’s real. He looks down, catches her wrist, studies her knuckles, her palm. “Are you from Duscur?” he asks at last, letting her go, like he’s trying to figure out something very important.

“Nah. I mean, I dunno, maybe my village was somewhere close to Duscur? But it was in the middle of nowhere up in the mountains, outside of any country. That was kinda the point. We’re all dark like me, but maybe it’s ‘cause Timotheus was, I dunno.” She chews her lip gently. “You see someone from Duscur in me, yeah?”

He jolts, recoils. “And you say you are not here to mock me.”

“Shit, Didi.” Hapi feels another fistful of ice sinking in her gut. “I didn’t mean to. Look, I don’t know much about the whole Duscur thing except that it’s bad enough nobody likes to talk about it. Sorry if I…”

He doesn’t respond. He just stands, a jittery surge of energy, before she’s even done speaking. Paces, boots heavy in the moss. “You speak nonsense,” he mutters. “This—this is all nonsense. What am I even doing here?”

Hapi stands too, busies herself flicking dirt off her skirt. Fuck, she’s got  _ no _ idea what Yuri-bird had said to him back in the woods. Or if his words even made a dent, if they were the reason Didi picked up and followed them. And it’s hard to be pissed at him when he’s this fucked up, but she’s pretty sure she hasn’t been talking nonsense? “Do you…want to leave?” she ventures at last.

“There’s…there’s something I have to do. I can’t do it here.” Frustration bubbles in his voice. “I don’t know whether I can do it at all.”

“Killing Eddy, you mean? Ending the war?”

“El,” he corrects, almost reflexively, voice raw and rumbly with anger. Different nickname. Huh. “And you,” he says, rounding on her with the dirt-weighted hem of his cloak swinging. “You keep acting as if—as if I am somebody to be comforted.” He says it like she’s acting like the sky is green.

“What are you, then?” She’s kinda got a guess, but if she’s gonna try to make sense of this…

“A monster,” he says dully, like it’s obvious. “A monster and a madman.”

“So’m I? Look, we’re all screwed up here, it’s okay—”

“No.” He shakes his head, eye darting back and forth. “No, it’s not, it’s—absurd. And you—you keep speaking as if you understand, yet you understand nothing. Whose blood is on your hands?”

Hapi freezes.

Some enemies, melted with magic, eaten alive. She hasn’t managed to crap monsters all over Abyss  _ yet _ . Cornelia had never told her, when she was little and she’d sigh by accident and the power would drain her and the guards would have to fight them off—she’d never told her  _ anything _ —

“I don’t know,” she says, but her throat is too tight for her voice to carry over the heavy tromp of Dimitri’s boots as he turns to march away.

Shit.

“Wait,” Hapi calls, trotting in his wake. “Wait, c’mon—this isn’t even about that, this is important, Big D, did you leave the door open?”

He grinds to a halt, turns to blink at her. “The…door?”

“Anybody can get out, but Yuri-bird keeps it locked to the outside. Safety and all. It’s hard to watch this entrance and there’ve been a lot of bandits. Look.” She digs in her skirt pocket. Yuri can be mad about this later if he wants to. She’d be shut out if he had slammed it behind him, but whatever, she knows the other entrances and she’s not sure he does. “I gotta lock up behind me when I go in. So hold onto this in case you need to get back in, all right?”

The key’s heavy in her palm.

He stares at her for a long moment, stock-still. The wind stirs. The anger’s faded from his face, leaving only a distant, bewildered sadness. Hapi wonders, stomach sinking, if this’ll be the last time she sees him. Fuck. This is why she’s supposed to know better than to care.

Dimitri takes the key, turns, and stalks off along the ravine.


	6. When the Clouds Part

Some small part of Yuri knows the moment he sets foot in Western Faerghus. It’s a keen, prickly knowledge, a filament in his veins which never burns this way for any other crossing. The bread-scent of home and the acid spike of danger, all in one. 

He takes a few days, visits his mother. There’s a lot on his plate, but he also hasn’t seen her in over a year, and there’s only so much you can put in a letter for fear of it being compromised. He doesn’t tell her about Dimitri outright, but he’s pretty sure she’s put it together by the time he turns his surly horse toward Gaspard. Shouldn’t be surprised. When has he ever managed to keep anything from her? She’d make a good rogue, he tells her, and she laughs. 

Yuri’s not sure what state he expected to find the West in. A ransack like Fhirdiad? No. His mother’s letters had told him otherwise, and she’s a master at sneaking subtext in between the lines. In truth and in irony, he can barely feel the weight of the occupation here. Old ladies haggle over turnips and trade insults in the side-street markets of Arianrhod, watched over by cheerful, shady-looking men who take a cut of the profits. Better them than Rowe’s tax collectors, who’d just as soon bleed everyone dry. Yuri recognizes some of these men, old comrades and vanguards of his own scraggly flock. 

The West endures, poor and spiky, but that’s not new. This land hasn’t changed since the Rowes of yesteryear seized it from its former governors after they fell trying to follow Riegan’s example in the Crescent Moon War. It would take a lot more than Edelgard or even Cornelia to upend the status quo here. 

Yuri’s always kept a lighter hand on Gaspard Castle Town. Less of a need for the Mockingbird when the local lord is a rare decent sort. Even with Lonato Gaspard over a year in the ground—the only noble the West has mourned in recent memory—his steward’s done well enough, and now Ashe will too. 

He books a room at the inn, stows his horse, then snags an urchin to run a letter to the young lord’s manse. He’s had no chance to warn Ashe he was coming, and putting his plans to paper is too dangerous besides. If Ashe isn’t home he’ll simply wait. He’s got a little time. 

_ Meet me at the marketplace _ , Yuri’s note says. And:  _ I still think you’re full of shit. Onions in the beet stew? Really? _

_ This isn’t a trap _ , says the voice between the lines. Who else but Yuri would know that Ashe is wrong and full of bad recipes?

A reply comes just before noon the next day. Ashe’s loopy handwriting is easy to recognize.  _ Onions are an aromatic _ , he insists.  _ You wouldn’t argue the presence of a carrot. I think you’re just being stubborn for its own sake.  _ And:  _ Two o’clock, if you are able? _

Ashe lights up as soon as he sees Yuri across the way. He’s still tiny, still growing into his full frame though he’s gained an inch since the battle for Garreg Mach. Yuri joins him, kissing him on both cheeks. A passing noble might take it for flirting. A commoner would know better. It’s just how you say hello, at least in the West, neighbor to neighbor. Ashe’s face heats nonetheless, but his shoulders are rigid with tension, and that makes Yuri tense up as well. “How’ve you been?” he asks. 

The weak smile Ashe gives him is half an answer in itself. “Busy,” he says. Yuri can relate. “I suppose I really am Lord Gaspard now.”

“You didn’t expect it?”

Ashe runs a hand through his messy hair. “I wasn’t sure, to be quite honest. After Lonato…” He leaves the statement hanging. Rufus could have just as easily stripped the Gaspards of their holdings after Lonato’s rebellion, installed a crony instead of the adopted commoner, but apparently he hadn’t bothered. “There’s a pie shop down the street,” Ashe tells him. “They’re quite good.” 

Yuri takes the hint. A little privacy, the kind they won’t get out here. “Are they as good as yours?” he asks, gesturing at Ashe to lead the way. 

“Better!” Ashe launches into a description as they walk, leading them to a boxy, out-of-the-way shack. A fat oven in the back pumps the air full of meat and pastry smells as a squat little man shoves another batch in. Yuri’s mouth waters. 

Delicious, and not a customer in sight. “Mob front, huh?” Yuri feels right at home. 

Ashe ducks his head. “Pierre’s an old friend. He used to hide me when the constables were on my tail. Back in the day.” Better still, the proprietor keeps to himself, loath to overhear anything that might get  _ him _ arrested. 

They tuck into a pair of chicken and mushroom pies, and Ashe says, “I swore my oaths to the Count two days ago.” 

Yuri’s stomach curdles, ruining the taste of the food. “It’s part of the routine, isn’t it?” he asks.

“He required it of all his subordinates,” Ashe replies. Yuri can’t  _ imagine  _ why, what with all the high treason Rowe’s committing. And now he’s shoring up his bets, tightening collar and leash on the petty nobles of his private little realm before they turn against him. If it were Yuri in Ashe’s place, he’d mouth the words and keep a knife ready in his sleeve. But Ashe believes in vows, believes in the duty of a vassal to his lord. 

And Yuri’s about to make his life even more complicated. 

Some words—some names—are still too dangerous to speak, even in private, but the patch of cloth hastily sewn inside the drape of Yuri’s sleeve cuts louder than any knife he carries. Ashe freezes as Yuri reaches for another pie, eyes wide as he takes in the Blaiddyd Crest. “He—”

Yuri hushes him with a furtive gesture of his hand. Ashe’s jaw firms up as he begins to understand. His throat bobs, once, twice. Yuri’s pulse thunders in his ears. This may have been a bit of a risk. If it were anyone else, Yuri would be counting his chances of having to kill an old friend. 

Ashe sucks in a staggered breath and slides out of his chair. Yuri blinks in disbelief as the newly-minted Lord Gaspard takes a knee before him. Sure, Yuri may only be a stand-in for all the grandeur. But fuck, it’s still a lot. 

“Whatever he—whatever you need.” Ashe says, his voice shaky and fierce. And this is why it wasn’t a risk at all. Ashe honors his spoken vows, but in his heart he’s already sworn to a king, a kingdom, a people. What lord could possibly hold a candle to that? 

“I need a man on the inside,” Yuri tells him. “Keep an eye on Rowe. Tell me everything he’s planning. His other knights, too. Tell me if anyone looks like they hate their job enough to flip. We’ll work out a code between us.”

Ashe nods.

“Don’t stick your neck out,” Yuri cautions him. “I may have more for you to do, but your first order is don’t get killed. Got it?”

Ashe grins, wide and real for the first time that day. “Loud and clear,” he says.

* * *

Dimitri is going in circles.

The circles his feet walk are deliberate, more or less. He knows these rocky woods. Even if every other turn is haunted by the Professor leading them out to a training exercise. By Dedue’s steady footsteps behind him. There are paths beyond the outskirts of Garreg Mach. He can find them when he needs them.

The circles in his mind are the ones that make him want to scream like a caged animal pacing round and round and round. The key is heavy in his hand. It has a ring at the top, one side already bent from his thumb tracing round and round and round. He has been careful not to hold the teeth.

He’d decided. Hadn’t he? Except what had he really decided in the end? To follow them, let them tend his wounds and coddle him. To cross fists with a man determined to treat a corpse like a person. To nest in the end of some underground alleyway until the voices of the dead rose to a fever pitch, screaming and screaming, driving him out into the sun.

There’s no point to him being here. There’s no point to any of this. He should just find a way forward, find something to do, except his idiot brain keeps turning and turning. This foolish desire to stay in a place where he doesn’t belong, where everybody’s words seem to bump up against him and knock his feet out from under him, in hopes of—what? That he’d somehow gather more strength than he already has? That they’d go back on their word and help him take revenge?  _ Suicide mission _ . That damn Yuri had stuck a splinter in his mind and twisted it all up in a thorny spiral.

The dead are quieter in the sun. He takes in the world in slices. One treetop. A downward slope, avoiding the roots. Grass. A circle of silvery-white.

“Please, sir. You need not despoil your vision with a failure such as myself.”

It’s a long, disconcerting moment as he takes her in. Constance, sitting in a pile of skirts just as she had during the match, except her head’s hung low, her eyes shaded in the dappled sunlight.

“Or if I impede your way,” she continues, bone-weary, “strike me down to clear your path. I care not.”

Dimitri freezes.

She just sits there, studying her hands, running one finger around and around a pink smear on her thumb. Not blood. He’s almost sure.

“How do you know if you want to die?” he asks at last, and his voice feels rough, jumping strangely in his throat, like he can’t control even that.

“What other outcome would suffice after a failure as profound as mine?” she says, almost matter-of-fact, and Dimitri’s whole chest clenches, aching. He sways, not even sure what’s pounding in his blood. Is this what Hapi feels when she sees him being particularly wretched? “Yet the Goddess has not seen fit to grant me such an end to my meaningless existence,” Constance continues, numb. “When I am permitted to retreat to the shadows and cloak myself in the false pretense of ambition, I celebrate that She has allowed me to continue. Yet when the sun is screaming in my eyes…” She shivers, falling silent.

Dimitri sinks down to sit, too stunned to keep his feet, because he didn’t even think this was  _ possible.  _ Like she’d held up a mirror to his soul.

“So I do not know,” she says after a long, shaky pause. “Please pardon my insufficiency.” She swallows. “No, even such a small pardon is too much to ask. I am incapable of even deciding whether I wish to live or die. And so I continue without end.”

Dimitri keeps fighting to breathe. “Was your failure…surviving them? Your family?”

The wind dies and the silence of reality is crushing, broken only by the distant cry of his father.

“Yes,” Constance says, head sagging further. “Such an inconceivable thing. When I pretend to strength, I shall tell myself that I survived to rebuild House Nuvelle. Yet what controlled my survival besides blind chance, the pull of a card, the spin of a die? It means nothing.”

“You’re…like me.” Dimitri manages a deep, strangled breath. Is that what this dizzying feeling is? Hadn’t there been moments of it with—with Dedue, with the Professor, dead, dead—

“I would never aspire to compare myself to a man such as you,” Constance murmurs. “No, you should not even have lowered yourself to listen to my ravings.”

“I suppose we shall both rave.” Dimitri picks at a thigh plate of his black-steel armor, savoring the scrape of metal on metal—at least that is a reasonable noise. “Why are you even out here?”

“Hapi, who finds it in herself to bring joy to my eye even when she should not sully herself with my presence, gave me sweet berries, and I foolishly hungered for more. The clouds parted, and I have yet to find the strength to stand in the face of such idiocy.”

“Do you.” Dimitri swallows hard. “Want to go back to Abyss?”

“Yes. It is selfish of me to darken its grand hallways. But to the people of Fhirdiad or Garreg Mach, I was a wretched oddity, and while I deserved every drop of the ridicule they heaped upon me, I found it difficult to bear in my prouder moments.”

“You have done nothing to deserve such treatment,” Dimitri rumbles, feeling anger snarl in his gut.

“Rather I have done everything to deserve it.” She’s silent for a time again, twisting her bony little fingers together. “Abyss shelters even such a lowly creature as myself without question. I confess I once found it difficult to believe Lord Yuri when he said it is a home for any who need one, regardless of who they are or what troubles them. But I confess that to my shame, for I was wrong to doubt him.”

Dimitri reels quietly, all his snarling mind fallen silent in surprise.

From Constance of all people—could he believe that?

It still seemed so absurd.

She sits motionless in the screaming sun.

Dimitri shakes out his hand, trying to force it to relax, and then fumbles with the clasps of his cloak. It feels like it takes an eternity to loosen them. It’s strawberry juice smeared on Constance’s fingers. Two clumsy idiots they are, huddled in the grass. Finally he undoes it, then drapes it over her, the wide swath of blue swallowing her small form.

There’s a moment of silence, and then a disgruntled, imperious voice rings out from underneath. “ _ Goddess _ , it smells. You really have let yourself go, Dimitri. Well, what are you waiting for? Sally forth! Lead me to Abyss. I can’t very well see from under this thing, now can I?”

* * *

Hapi finds Balthus putting a tankard away in the Rose and, without preamble, flops face-first into his broad back and says, very distinctly, “Bluh.”

“Bluh?” he echoes into his beer, then finishes a gulp. “That bad, huh? Y’know, if you wanna let it out, we could go outside.”

“Screw you, B,” she mumbles without heat. “Didi was in a bad way. He took off. Gave him my key, but I dunno if he’ll be back.”

“Shit.” Balthus rearranges slightly, rolling her against his side instead, and she lets him. “Well, I got a spare I can give ya. Did he say he was leaving?”

She wrinkles her nose. “Not for sure. But he was caught up on killing Eddy again.” He settles a big hand in her hair, massaging gently, which means they’ll have to pick it out of the joints of his gauntlets later, but it’s kinda nice for now. “At least that was part of it, I think.” She hisses between her lips instead of sighing.

“Could be he’s just exploring.”

“It’s not like he doesn’t know the woods, B, he went to school here and everything.”

“Exploring himself, I mean. But if he doesn’t come back by tomorrow, we could go track him down if you like.”

“Mrr.” Her gut churns vaguely with worry, but mostly she just feels very tired. “I don’t know how many more times he’s gonna let us drag him back here if he doesn’t really wanna stay, but man, I also don’t wanna have to tell Yuri-bird I lost him.”

B snorts. “Yeah, me neither. You he likes. He’d have my hide.”

“Only because you’re a kinky bastard and that’s how he shows his love,” Hapi says, pinching his side half-heartedly.

“Oi, oi. And what kinda tension are you trying to blow off, little lady?”

“Lady? Me?” Hapi blows him a raspberry. “I’m just fussing. I feel like I should be looking for Big D, but I dunno if he’d take it from me. This is what I get for caring.”

B makes a thoughtful noise, then leans down to kiss the top of her head, all scratchy-stubble. “Kinda sucks sometimes, but hard to turn off, yeah?”

“Mrf,” she says, and strains up to kiss his cheek in return—well, mostly gets his jaw because he’s too stupidly big. “I mean, we got messed with by the same crazy lady, it’s like an entirely new kind of weird solidarity.”

“Easy to feel protective of somebody you’ve got that kinda shit in common with,” B says, like he knows exactly what he’s saying, and shit, maybe he does. It’s not like she knows all his stuff. Just that there’s an alarming number of people who want him dead. He doesn’t blab much. “Give him a little space and we’ll see, yeah?”

“Yeah.” She bites his jacket. “Also you just said that.” One of his big leather-covered fingers brushes her cheek, warm and rough. Feels like a question, so she kisses it in answer.

She’s got time to duck away as he turns her face and leans down to kiss her, but she’s not gonna. It’s not like it’s a big deal between them, not like him and Yuri-bird, just the occasional makeout between friends. Because screw it, B’s a nice kisser, and for once in her life, she’s not locked up somewhere or another and can actually enjoy herself.

Hapi’s starting to relax into it, feeling some tension melt away as B kisses her deep and hot and heady, one hand fidgeting because he’s inevitably stuck in her hair, when she hears Coco’s voice echoing down the hallway.

“—forget everything you heard! And wash your cloak! My noble self has lived in Abyss for nearly a year and I have never smelled anything quite that distasteful. Goddess, you are as difficult as that reprobate Balthus.”

Balthus and Hapi break off their kiss, blinking, to see Coco bulling her way into the Rose—with Dimitri in her wake. He stutters to a halt, cloak a bundle in his arms, blinking at the two of them. And making a strange creaking noise, face turning pink under the unruly shag of his hair.

Hapi bites her lip very hard against a sigh of relief. “Hey, Big D.”

“Ah,” he says slowly, and looks like he’s fumbling with the tangle of cloak. “Your key.”

“Nah, keep it. I got a spare. Right, B?”

B snorts. “I mean, I was gonna let myself into the boss’ apartment and steal one, but sure, you got a spare.” He nods at Didi. “Yuri’d probably want you to have one at some point.”

“You are living among us, after all,” Coco declares. She’s a little louder than usual, like she’s making up for something. Hapi wonders if she’d gotten dragged outside somehow. “Regardless of the peculiar circumstances.” She flings her arms wide, gawkily enough that she smacks Didi in the shoulder with one bony elbow. “You may as well make the best of it, just as I have!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He's still dead, but he's also embarrassed: the Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd story.


	7. Flocking With the Crows

Yuri gets to hear all about it when he gets back to Abyss. Dimitri’s little trip, like he didn’t get enough of the woods the first time around. The close call of it hitches below Yuri’s ribs, grinding like swallowed glass, but one look at Hapi’s guilty expression, and he can’t even bring himself to give her shit about it. They took care of it. That’s all that matters. 

New worries swamp the old soon enough. Abyss’s ledgers, kept honestly amidst a life of crime, croon a disquieting melody. The flood of refugees has slowed to a stream, but not a trickle. Some of the old residents might have scattered, but most are sitting tighter than ever, eyes on the Empire’s gathering storm. Leicester goods fall off the back of a series of carts—good old Claude, coming through like he promised—and it’s not nearly enough to make up for the Church’s vanished assistance. There’s only so much Claude can do before his own crops come in, and working under the table besides. Yuri grits his teeth, chews through the quills of his pens, and digs into his personal funds, time and time again. The Savage Mockingbird’s not exactly poor, even now with Cornelia’s forces guarding Kleiman’s tax caravans, but glitter though he might, he’s not made of coin. 

To complicate matters, Edelgard’s war had disrupted planting season in the area surrounding Garreg Mach. The harvest will be lean, and what little the locals are selling these days comes at a higher price. Worse yet, chaos and poverty breed bandits in droves. Winter is still a ways away, but it will come sooner than anyone wants, hunger and freezing cold howling on its winds. 

_Who do I have to fuck to make this balance?_ The thought’s a lot less abstract than Yuri might like. Of course there are strings he could still pull back in Enbarr. He can’t even in good conscience label them a last resort, no matter how the thought sickens him. He tells himself Adrestia’s too dangerous right now. Not quite a bare-faced lie, with Dimitri’s safety to account for, but it’s still an excuse, and Yuri knows it. 

He starts going a little spare after days of cramming himself into his tiny office. Even the walls of his apartment are looming cage-like. He’s got a plan of action quarter-baked, rattling around in his head, but it’s waiting on some little birds to bring back a few key extra details. In the meantime, he bullies Balthus into dragging the ratty old couch into the Ashen Wolves’ classroom. Doesn’t take much bullying. The classroom’s still his turf, so he can still work in something like privacy. Most of Abyss’s residents know better than to bother him there. 

Emphasis on ‘most.’ Which is how he finds himself crammed into the middle of the couch, using Hapi’s head for a desk, since she so graciously insisted on using his lap as a pillow. Balthus is a warm bulk against his side, taking up most of the space. Only fair—he did do the hauling. Constance has perched herself on the far end, dainty button boots digging into Balthus’s legs. She’ll have slid down into his lap by the end of the night, if previous experience is anything to go by. Hapi’s breath ruffles warm over Yuri’s fingers, and the lamplight glows gold, and it’s good. It’s so fucking good, though he might slit his own throat before he admits as much. 

Yuri’s bent over his ledgers when another presence prickles the back of his neck. He raises his head and sees Dimitri, a gaunt spectre in the doorway, hovering for lack of an invitation. He’s been drifting since Yuri returned. Unhostile, not one foot out the door, but distant. Easy enough to forget he’s there at all, save for the rare occasional glimpse. 

Yuri catches his eye, waves in greeting. “What brings you here, my friend?” 

Some muscle in Dimitri’s shoulder jumps minutely. “I. It’s nothing,” and his eye burns, steady as the lamps and just as hungry for fuel. 

Hapi blows him a raspberry. “Nah. Don’t buy that.” 

Dimitri shuffles his feet. “I had no purpose in coming here.” 

_Grown lonely for our company?_ Yuri wonders, and can’t decide whether the thought would surprise him or not. 

“It’s just that…” Dimitri takes one step, two, barely-conscious and unbidden. 

Hapi nods beneath Yuri’s hand. “Just that...?”

“I’ve wandered inside a memory,” Dimitri says. 

Constance chortles, unladylike. “I understand if you dare doubt the reality of my presence. Surely my greatness borders on the unbelievable.”

“Quit fishing for compliments.” Balthus reaches up to ruffle her hair while Constance squawks. “We’re all real, pal,” he tells Dimitri. 

“It’s not that,” Dimitri says. “Simply... No.” He shakes his great tawny head ruefully. “No, not so simply, I suppose. This reminds me of a memory. A fond one, from my childhood.” He gestures at the pile of them. “Except there were five of us, then. Myself, Sylvain, Felix, Ingrid.” Five with the unspoken ghost of Glenn Fraldarius all but frosting Dimitri’s breath.

“We were very young,” Dimitri continues. “We’d tire ourselves out playing. Sylvain might have to carry Felix or Ingrid back to the house. He was the biggest of us then.” The Balthus of the group. Yuri files that away. On reflection, the parallel might be more apt than the simple superficiality of height. Sylvain’s got that same dumbass tendency to guard every flank but his own, now that Yuri thinks about it. “We’d all fall asleep in one of the big guest bedrooms.” Dimitri’s eye slides shut, holding the memory close. Yuri watches the tilt of his face, leaning into a decade-old summer breeze, ears ringing with long-past laughter. 

“Glenn was alive then,” Dimitri finally says. Ah, there’s the name at last. “Now he is dead, like me.” 

Yuri holds out his hand. “Well, get over here then, Dead Guy. We’ll be five, with you.” He says it half in jest, but Dimitri takes another step. Something inside Yuri’s chest cracks and softens. 

His journey complete, Dimitri sags against the arm of the couch, uncertain. Hapi lifts one foot to poke him in the side, wiggling her toes at him. “Want me to shove over?” There’s barely room, but they could probably manage. 

Dimitri shakes his head, glances up at Constance, and takes the arm, a giant, sturdy, sideward-tilted reflection of her posture. Watching him try to perch is ridiculous, but Yuri holds his laugh, holds his breath, and only lets it out when Dimitri’s clumsy, gloved hand brushes Hapi’s shins. It’s hard to tell if he’s even noticed. None of them’s gonna point it out, that’s for sure. 

_Don’t_ _make a big deal out of this. Let him have his moment._ Yuri readjusts the weight of his books and focuses on the scratching of the quill, careful not to drip ink in Hapi’s hair. 

“What is that?” Dimitri asks, and Yuri makes up his mind. 

“Depends,” he says. “Feel up to committing some crime?” 

Dimitri’s eye narrows. “What crime?”

“Not much of a one at all,” Yuri reassures him. “A little birdie told me a Dukedom convoy will be passing not too far from here. Carrying taxes, tribute to the Empire, and the like. We hit them, take what they stole. Use it for those who need it more—that would be us, in case you were wondering.” 

“That hardly counts as crime,” Dimitri rumbles. 

“Disappointed?”

Dimitri glares.

“A crime in the eyes of the law,” Yuri clarifies. “The moral high ground, by our perspective.” It’s an imperfect answer, and they both know it, but facetious is still miles better than silence, or breaking the night’s fragile peace. 

In the right light, Dimitri’s grimace could pass for a bitter smile. “My very continued existence has already branded you all criminals and traitors in their wretched eyes.” 

“Nothing but the best for you, my friend.” Yuri passes the ledger to Balthus so his longer arms can set it down on a nearby desk. “So, are you in?”

He expects Dimitri to shrug, claim their goals are unimportant. Imply perhaps that he’ll only participate for lack of a better diversion. But Dimitri only nods, wordless. 

“About time!” Balthus booms cheerfully. “Been a while since we saw some real action around here. I was this close to changing my title to King of Sitting on His Ass.” 

“You _could_ do something actually useful,” Constance grouses. “Such as assisting me with my research—not that I would trust you with such delicate work. Or—or performing manual labor, like His Royal Highness here. It’s roughly what you’re good for.” 

“Hey!” Balthus jostles her, offended. “I do plenty of work.” Half the work of running Abyss, in fact, when Yuri isn’t here. 

Constance turns up her nose. “Well. You could stand to take a little more pride in it, in that case.” 

“...And there they go,” Hapi tells no one in particular. “They’ll never shut up now. It’s kind of cozy.” 

Yuri sneaks a long glance at Dimitri’s expression, half bewildered, half yearning. It’s no stretch to imagine the bickering songs of childhoods long past superimposing themselves onto the present. “Careful,” he says. “They’ll have you joining in before you know it.” _We’ll have you caring about petty shit yet. That’s how you’ll know you’re alive._

“Unlikely,” is Dimitri’s curt reply, but as the night wears on, as Yuri goes back to his figures, and Hapi falls asleep, and Balthus and Constance forget what they were arguing about, he doesn’t leave, and he somehow manages not to slide off the couch, and he doesn’t leave, and he doesn’t leave. 

* * *

Hapi scouts ahead of their little band through the Oghma Mountains, stalking the edges of Magdred Way, and snorts when she finds a burned-out fire circle, a scatter of scraps and broken weapons. Abandoned camp. Sure enough, nearby there’s a nice little overlook, scattered with trees. It’s a perfect spot for an ambush, and if Yuri’s little birdie flock is right, the caravan should be through here before mid-afternoon. Making good time down to Adrestia with a tidy pile of Cornelia’s tribute. 

“You want dinner, you find a critter run,” she says idly to herself, crouching to feel the moss worn down by thundering feet pouring down this hill however many months ago. “You want coin, you find a bandit run.” She sticks fingers in her mouth and whistles. That’s the wonderful thing about mockingbird calls: they can be just about anything, but they all blend into the woods.

Her silent shadow of a bodyguard slinks up beside her, two borrowed lances strapped to his back. Didi had stuck close to her, which was pretty sweet of him, and at least he’s not clumsy in the woods. Unlike some others she could name.

For a long while he just stands there, studying the landscape, mouth twisting. “We’re not bandits,” he says at last, sounding more than a little unsure. It’s not like they weren’t both there for Yuri’s briefing. _We’re pretty distinctive. If stories make it too far, Abyss could be in big trouble. So we kill every last one of them._

“Bandit-shaped?” Hapi says, still crouching, wiggling her fingers. This shape for Miasma. This one for Banshee. This one for Death. She’s not like Coco or the other mages she met in Chatty’s classes, at least when it comes to what she’s good at. She doesn’t visualize entire complicated patterns in her head after memorizing them for days. She just—knows. Banshee’s every time she couldn’t scream because Cornelia had jabbed something down her throat, rolled up and poured out through three fingers clawed and shaking just so. Like that.

The city slickers, picking their way along in answer to Hapi’s bird call, are finally catching up. Yuri-bird, B, a six-pack of rogues. Coco, jittery and subdued in the half-shade of the trees, is leading her disgruntled pegasus on foot and occasionally picking a pine needle out of those big beautiful black wings.

“Marauders,” Yuri says, “kill for the fuck of it. Bandits kill to line their own pockets and don’t give a damn about anything beyond that. Now what’s the word for people who kill for the chance to give those ill-gotten gains to the ones who really need them.”

It’s nothing more than a rhetorical question, idle. B gives Hapi what might’ve been a ruffle if he wasn’t already strapped into a pair of iron gauntlets, but comes out more like a tap on the head. One of the rogues hands her the reins of a horse with a wary nod. Yuri-bird’s pulled strings to find her a mare placid enough to spellcast from, which is more of a relief than Hapi would like to admit. Being a sitting duck on foot as Big D threw them against that patrol had not been her idea of fun.

The horse nuzzles Hapi, snorts at her funny monster smell, calms down when she offers her an apple from her pocket, and lips lazily at her hair as the little band gets itself in order.

“Knights,” Dimitri says.

Yuri-bird goes still for a moment, darting a wide-eyed glance at him. “Only in Ashe’s stories, my friend. But sure. I could go with that.”

“ _Crime_ knights,” B says with a grin, clanking his gauntlets together.

Hapi stretches and mounts up, patting her horse’s neck as she gets the feel of her, then stirs her to a walk. She nudges over to Coco, who swings onto her pegasus with a wilted murmur of, “Please do not trouble yourself with the sight of me. It would be best if you had left one of my poor skills behind.”

“‘S’okay, Coco. We’ll be back home as soon as this is over. Just help me keep an eye on the dumb boys, yeah?”

“My eyes are of no service in the glare of my obvious failings,” she mumbles, but she’s locking her feet in the stirrups and dropping her reins into the notch on her saddle that holds them at hand for emergencies. Not that Hapi’s ever seen Coco have to touch the reins in battle. Her red-eyed, sharp-toothed, creepy-awesome mount knows her every whim, sunshine or shade, leaving her hands free for long-drawn and elaborate spell circles in midair.

“You got this, hon,” Hapi says, and finds her own rein-notch.

Big D slides in front of them like a wordless shield, palming a lance. B and Yuri-bird lock into step, the big burly distraction and the fast-footed knife in the back of whoever gets distracted. The rogues mill and flank.

And they wait. Clouds come. Clouds pass. Birds resettle. One of the rogues peels off to take a piss in a bush, and the little birds spook, but the crows stay, hungry.

“Hey, Didi,” Hapi says, lazily scritching her horse’s mane as the girl grazes on weeds. “Thanks for coming back.”

There’s a vague shift of the mass of fur before her, a slight turn of his head, but he says nothing. Bird-scaring dude falls back in line.

Nobody calls it when the first red-and-blue dukedom banner comes around the curve of the path. They can all see well enough. Didi breathes in slowly through his teeth, spins his lance around with a thrum of metal in air to rest for a charge. “Arc around the back when we charge, Constance,” Yuri says, low and firm, because there’s a sniper keeping pace with the first wagon.

The little convoy is well-armed, watchful. Everyone knows any road through the Oghma Mountains is dangerous, even more since the fall of Garreg Mach. About two dozen, but better equipped and more keyed up than the patrol that had nearly flattened them. Well, so are they.

Hapi curls three fingers into a claw. Yuri raises his sword. Drops it as the first wagon closes on their perch, and the wolves come howling down the hill.

* * *

The first guy whose face melts off from dark magic is probably younger than Hapi, all elbows and knees in a blue uniform with a dukedom patch lopsidedly stitched on one shoulder, twitching and hollering until he sags limp to the muddy road. At least his arrows can’t reach Coco where she wheels above.

“Relax,” Hapi breathes, coaxing her mare back from a whirling swordsman. “You’re dead.”

Didi, no surprise, rips into soldiers like an angry cat with a gauze curtain. Hapi skirts his wake, mare snorting as she side-steps, plucking off problems with long-sailing blobs of darkness. Yuri-bird and B are flanking, moving like a perfect pair of hunting wolves. At least they’ve got their shit together this time. For a moment, it feels almost like fighting with Chatty—the tidy formation, the easy coordination.

“Fuck,” Hapi mutters, and pours out that grief in gouts of purple and black that swallow the other archer on the far side of the caravan. Yuri-bird meets two swordsmen in a blur and a spray of blood. B catches an axe strike on his gauntlets, heaving it off and pushing into striking range with a roar. Then breaks through their line to smash the ribs of their beak-masked mages, trusting Yuri to heal him if he catches a spell. The lead driver is frantically buggy-whipping his panicking horses, and finally manages to get them pulling in harness, stirring the first wagon into a jolting rush down the road, with its cavalier escorts galloping alongside.

“Desist,” Coco intones from on high, and sends a fireball after them, sending one of the cavaliers sliding off his horse with a howl as he writhes aflame. Big D surges like a black tide, mounting the abandoned and stamping horse without hesitation, and kicks it into a bucking gallop. The poor scorched thing might be trying to toss him into the sun, but it’s not pulling a heavy wagon, and he catches up with the front of it easily enough, skewers one of the wagon-team right through with a splinter of broken lance and a scream of dying horse, and leaps onto the front of the wagon.

The driver’s skull splits in Didi’s hand like a grape.

The burning cavalier goes still, dragged along with the stalling wagon, and flames lick up the canvas side of it.

Hapi picks off the other cavalier with another welter of death, moments before his lance finds Didi’s blind side.

The wagon starts screaming.

Didi freezes, wide-eyed, and Yuri-bird’s head whips around from where he’s securing the other two wagons with B and the boys. “The canvas,” Hapi blurts, and Didi plunges a gauntleted hand into the thick white weave of it and pulls, ripping it open.

A dozen brawny young men, shackled in a chain-line, are huddled in the fire-catching wagon. They’re streaked with filth, clearly terrified, and wearing black-marked placards around their necks, a particular symbol that—

Hapi’s mind goes white.

She knows that one. Fodder. The ones marked like that went into rooms in Cornelia’s secret basement in the castle and never came out. Not as people, anyway.

She’s frozen, hands limp, and her throat feels like it wants to tear itself open. The world rocks under her as her mare, ears flicking in alarm, back-steps from the fire.

“Yuri,” Dimitri calls, and there’s something raw and pleading in his voice. He’s crouched on the driver’s seat like a gargoyle, eye wild, blood and brains dripping down his face and hand as the prisoners shrink away from him.

There’s a gray bird blur rushing up, cloak trailing, crest-light shining on his hand as he moves uncannily fast. “We’re taking you lot,” Yuri barks with all the sharp-edged command of the Lord of Abyss. “You’ll not be killed or sold, but we can’t have you running off and blabbing about what happened. You try, we’ll drag you back.” B looms up behind him, red-streaked gauntlets and abs a-swagger, and smiles with all his teeth. “Got it?”

They shift, mumble, cast about wild-eyed like they’re eyeing their chances. Look up at Dimitri, and Hapi can’t tell whether they’re wondering if he’s their prince or their executioner. But sure, it’s hard to say no to Yuri-bird when he’s got that steel in his jaw.

Didi looks between the prisoners and the wagon-driver’s pulped face, face shuttering, hollow and distant. Yuri-bird slides out his lockpicks to unlatch the prisoners’ chain-line from the wagon’s floor. Hapi’s mare snorts and drops her head down to munch some more sweet spring grass, and slowly, slowly, she remembers how to breathe. It’s over.


End file.
